


In Your Summer Smile

by horsehorsecollier



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (technically?), Aged-Up Yuri Plisetsky, Almaty, Clubbing, Friends to Lovers, I'm Capitalizing the Tags Ironically, Long-Lasting Healthy Friendships Are My Kink, Otabek's Friends Are Little Shits, Recreational Drug Use, Yuri Has Emotionally Matured
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-10-03 09:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10242056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horsehorsecollier/pseuds/horsehorsecollier
Summary: When you have friends who are little shits and can't keep a secret, and you tell them all about your best-friend-whom-you're-in-love-with, you don't introduce said best friend with said friends. This is a fact.This is also a fact: when your best-friend-whom-you're-in-love-with asks to meet the people in your life, you don't (can't!) just say no.Or: Yuri Plisetsky visits Almaty for the first time.





	1. The Beauty of Healthy Relationships, and How Yuri Manages to Manipulate His Best Friend Into Letting Him Come To Almaty

**Author's Note:**

> Sup kids! And welcome to Flavortown.
> 
> This actually isn't my first fanfic I've ever written, but the other one was a pretentious Ereri thing I wrote when I was like thirteen (who am I kidding check out Our Love Will Be Legend by ErinEqualsEhrynn, bask in all my self-promotion). But this is the first one I've done for Yuri on Ice, and also the first one that has an actual plan to it, which is cool.
> 
> So I came up with this idea when I was listening to 'Gooey' by Glass Animals, which is a great song, 10/10 recommend, and I got a certain aesthetic stuck in my head. Then I came up with a few other headcanons and shit, and I brilliantly decided to write it into one fic! Haha sike it wasn't brilliant in the slightest it was me procrastinating my APUSH paper.
> 
> Shout-out to my friend Emmalee because I'm almost definitely forcing her to read this. Fun fact! In that one Buzzfeed "Which YOI character are you" quiz I exclusively get Yuri P. and she got Otabek. Our friendship is now, apparently, Blessed (but considerably less Shipped and more Sisterly).
> 
> Also, shout-out to user @vivevoce, who wrote the very Nice fic "it's the life we're living now," because it inspired me to pen my shitty headcanons. So like... hey gurl if you're reading this, I was that one anonymous comment on the last chapter.
> 
> Love y'all, enjoy!

If you split the ends of a stick and pull them apart, it only feels natural to let them snap back together. This is how it feels with Otabek in Yuri’s life--like all their time before they met had been somewhat tense, and now that they are together (not  _ together _ -together, but all the same) their souls have been righted.

Every summer, Otabek stays three weeks in Russia. During the winter season, Otabek, his coach, and his fellow student Darya train in St. Petersburg from time to time. No one quite remembers if it was a joke or not, but Otabek has a Team Russia jacket with his name on the back; he had his own locker; he has a pair of hockey skates in that locker drunkenly gifted to him by retired player Pyotr Chyvakov.

One year in May, and one year in August, and the next in both, Otabek went with Yuri to his grandfather’s home in Moscow.

His grandfather has learned to make two beds before a visit. He makes them both his specialty pirozhki for lunch and ruffles both their heads. He makes Otabek carry heavy boxes, gives him old sweaters. He calls Otabek his “second grandson.” 

Yuri, who is by nature vindictive and borderline possessive of those he loves (he’s come to remedy this through puberty and the passage of time), is not jealous in the slightest that Otabek has imprinted on his grandfather so thoroughly. In fact, by some odd twist of universal reasoning, he has never felt so loved and accepted in all his life.

Mila flirted with Otabek for a few days in the first year, but her resolve in that flew away to some nebulous nowhere and never returned. Sometimes, now, Mila calls him brother. “It’s important,” she says, “that all prospective suitors know I am surrounded by a family of very attractive people.”

“But why?” says Yuuri Katsuki, the sacred and beloved older brother, the most mystically beautiful member of this attractive family.

“So they know that I’m better than them, and surround myself with people better than them.”

“An intimidation tactic?” ventures Otabek.

“Exactly,” says Mila, pleased. “Be honored, Otabek Altin. I’m using your jawline to terrify people.”

Then Yuri squints up at Otabek, saying ‘How are you not creeped out by her?’ in the Plisetsky dialect of unspoken understanding.

Otabek shrugs in response, which means in the Altin dialect of unspoken understanding that Yuri is fluent in, ‘I’ve dealt with weirder people before.’

Yuri ever so slightly raises his eyebrows, and this single gesture translates back into an ongoing issue that’s sitting between them: ‘I know who you’re probably referring to by weirder people, and I’m a little bit annoyed and much more confused as to why, after nearly four years of friendship, you still won’t introduce me to your friends back in Almaty, even over Skype.’ Otabek, understanding perfectly, as he always does, bites his lip and lowers his eyes, which means that he still doesn’t have a good answer for that. 

Some say that Chinese is the hardest language to learn, and others English, but Yuri knows this: that the silent language between them is the most impossible one that will ever be. To know the language you must know everything about one-or-the-other, such as faces and bodies and mannerisms and how their minds think and the very way their hearts beat. Neither of them will ever let someone close enough to even learn the basics. 

He likes it immensely. Their untranslatable language is far more dignified than the mutated horror of Viktor and Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov’s Russian-Japanese-English blend.

In speaking of them--the married couple. 

There is one extra bedroom in their apartment that is Yuri’s. It has tiger print sheets on a black trundle bed, and a cluster of framed photos and band posters covering one wall, and Otabek’s guitar next to a stool. 

Yuri has woken to soft song lazily drifting from that stool and has subtly watched fingers skitter deftly across those guitar strings through half-lidded eyes.

There are two shelves in the closet in Yuri’s room and one level on the trundle bed (the lower, since it’s Yuri’s room and the top level means ownership of the room) that are Otabek’s. There is a toothbrush in the guest bathroom labeled O. Enough clutter has been cleared from the garage beneath the apartment building to make room for a motorcycle.

Yuuri Katsuki likes Otabek’s unobtrusive quiet; Otabek has said he like’s Yuuri’s peace, and the two of them will happily sit together in silence. Viktor has been trying to some measure of success over the past three years to get Kazakh lessons out of him--he claims that the fact that Yuri can speak semi-fluent Kazakh and he can’t is “unfair,” and that “what the child can do, the parent should be able to do also.”

This is how Otabek Altin fits into Yuri’s life: seamlessly, like he’d been carved a space at Yuri’s side at the beginning of time. He doesn’t follow Eli Whitney’s theory of interchangeable parts--if he left, there would be no replacement.

Yuri, on the other hand, has never been to Almaty.

Otabek has in no way excluded Yuri from his life by any means--or by most means, anyway.

When they are not together, they tend to talk at least a few times a week. Commonly, this means every day. Some days it’s texting; some days it’s teasing in Instagram comments. Commonly, talking means Skype. And it was through the medium of Skype that Yuri met Otabek’s family.

It had begun the first year. Otabek’s family, before he had moved across Almaty to his own apartment, came once into the background of their call. Each--mother, father, sister, brother--were instantly enchanted by Yuri, and instinctively and fiercely loved him from then on.

Nowadays, when Yuri is bored, he’ll call each of the Altin family members without Otabek even being there. Commonly, this is without even a real reason, either.

To the Altin mother, Yuri is the family jewel. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t question. Every time she calls him, or the other way around, she greets him in happy Kazakh-- “Hello, my jewel!” She is enough to turn the days of lowest teenage depression into a day where his heart feels diamond. 

Otabek’s father is a frazzled, overworked teacher who often needs an outlet for his emotional exhaustion. This outlet came heaven-sent when Yuri, a few months after they became friends, was officially established as a indefinite-but-probably-permanent part of Otabek’s life, and his father, recognizing that yes, this was a heaven-sent opportunity, used it gratuitously. Occasionally, he calls Yuri with the sole purpose of complaining about the ridiculousness of his family and students.

Aliya, similarly, sees Yuri as her closest confidant, apparently, even closer than Otabek, whom she says has too high a chance of knowing the people she gossips about. She’ll rant about how she thinks her best friend might secretly be planning on going to the party that Aliya was deliberately not invited to because it was thrown by the biggest bitch in her grade, and how she always comes so close to getting a boyfriend but they always shy away at the last second, and how the movie theaters in the city don’t show the movie she’s been waiting for for ages--she might have to go all the way to Moscow to find it! 

Amusedly, Yuri watches over Skype as she tells Otabek that she’s going to marry Yuri someday so she’ll have someone to gossip with forever.

“Why do that?” he replies neutrally, his mouth turned down in what, to Yuri, is obvious distaste. “You complain all the time at any rate.”

“Do I get a say in this marriage or is it fucked up and arranged?” Yuri asks.

“No,” says Aliya as Otabek says “Of course, Yura.” He’s lounging on his sister’s bed reading  _ The Great Gatsby,  _ and Yuri assumes that his expression--he subtly looks like he’s about to cry--is because his English isn’t all that great still and the book’s English vocabulary is enough to make his head hurt.

Aliya rolls her eyes. “Of course you’d say that, Beka.”  Although Otabek doesn’t appear to react in the slightest, she coos. “Aw, it’s alright, don’t be upset. Our parents wholeheartedly agree.”

“The fuck are you two talking about?” Yuri says.

She says with a wink, “Relevant things. Tell me--does Otabek never shut up about things he’s passionate about with you?”

“Aliya, he spent four hours once teaching me basic song-mixing. He once got so emotional ranting about poetry or something that he would only talk in Shala Kazakh.  He has gotten us kicked out of a cinema because he wouldn’t stop talking about how he’d been back from America for two years but he still didn’t understand the concept of corndogs. He has  _ sleepwalked  _ into my room and  _ crawled into my bed  _ and whispered to me about how to properly keep a motorcycle’s engine from freezing during the winter months,  _ in his sleep.  _ There’s more, too, that’s just off the top of my head.”

“Thanks for all the dirt, Yurim,” says Aliya cheerfully. “I guess I won’t bother spilling all the stuff he rants about in Almaty!”

“You’d probably break my fucking brain,” Yuri agrees.

“And you know what? I thought it would get better as he grows up. But these past few years he’s just gotten worse.” There’s something mischievous laced in her tone, but because Yuri is tired and also respectful of Otabek’s privacy, he thinks nothing of it.

Otabek is staring piercingly at them, betrayal written on his face. “I don’t walk the three thousand miles between the two of you every day so I can get attacked like this.”

“We love you too,” says Aliya flippantly.

Then, of course, is little Yosef, the most joyous surprise the Altins ever had after nearly ten years of no children. Little Yosef has a near constant need to be hugging someone or something, and as a result, half of the calls Yuri makes finds him wrapped around his mother’s legs or clinging to Otabek’s back.

Little Yosef will call when it’s three in the morning in Almaty, having stolen Aliya’s phone, and panic with his face half in the frame. “Yuri!” says little Yosef once, his eyes wide with fear. “I just woke up because I just realized! Are you coming to Nauryz for the family dinner?”

Yuri, who has been crudely woken up by his phone, is rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and would have murdered the caller if it had been, say, Aliya or Mila, feels an immediate bolt of regret. “I’m sorry, Yosef,” he says sadly. “I’m in training for the world championship for ice skating right now, just like Beka. I don’t think I can make it to Kazakhstan for Nauryz.”

“Oh.” Little Yosef visibly deflates. Little Yosef is built more like his cousin, Araily, whom Yuri has also seen, and who is thin and gangly--but he has the same pouting face as Otabek. “Why do you never come down to see us? That’s not okay!”

“I don’t know,” says Yuri.

“But Yuri, family has to stick together! We aren’t full when you’re not here! You need to come down!”

Yuri is too struck by the fact that he is, apparently, such an official member of the Altin family that little Yosef sees it as an intrinsic fact of life to make a proper response to that. He realizes, though, this: that he has been Otabek’s best friend for almost half of little Yosef’s life. Yosef probably hardly remembers a time when Yuri wasn’t there.

After the nuclear family in itself, there is the terrifying and unforgettable incident of the Matriarchs. Yuri had received a call from Otabek’s phone, but on picking it up, he found instead to his horror a group of five women--Otabek’s four aunts on his father’s side and his grandmother--observing him in shrewd silence. He panicked as he tried to remember what his grandfather had taught him about manners and being a gentleman and all that shit; it took five minutes of politeness and trying not to stutter from the terror before his grandmother spoke:

“You are worthy to this family!” she had exclaimed. “Let the history of this bloodline be carried on through Yosef, and let you be a part of the history!”

He had mentally restrained himself from the standard response of “What the fuck, hag?” and deemed it appropriate not to ask. If Otabek’s stories were any indication, she was more powerful than even Lilia. She was the reigning queen of the entire Altin line, and if you were an Altin and you weren’t stupid, you would do things with your life that would bring her honor. 

So that is how Yuri fits into Otabek’s life: he is family. Family is permanent, and unconditional; it is unquestioning love and trust; it’s the cornerstone of the life you build; it’s the backbone of your soul. 

But for some reason, Otabek has segregated Yuri from exactly two things: his friends, and letting Yuri visit Almaty. 

It’s going to be reaching four years of friendship, soon, and this segregation is ridiculous. Yuri, as a metemorphasizedly matured eighteen-year-old, is far above picking a fight with Otabek about it. However, nature is nature is nature, and Yuri will as surely as taxes be petty until his dying day, and so he is nowhere near above vaguely guilt-tripping him about it. The opportunities to carry out this plan are boundless and infinite, so he has a plethora of options to handpick from. 

The opportunity he chooses is on a lazy Saturday night. However, it’s not actually Saturday night; it’s ridiculously early on a Sunday morning. Otabek flew back to Almaty from St. Petersburg the day before, and he is, in true Otabek fashion, doing absolutely nothing to solve his jet lag and instead letting his circadian rhythm suffer. It’s also deeply Otabek tradition to force Yuri to suffer along with him and make him Skype at ungodly hours of the jetlagged night.

As a result, when Yuri is woken up at three in the morning by the obnoxious ringtone for a video call, he is pissier than his cat’s box, but he is in no way surprised.

“Buy my mixtape,” Otabek says, deadpan, with nary even a greeting. 

“Good fucking morning to you, too, asshole,” Yuri says. Otabek’s lack of reaction to this could be due to either how used to it he is, or the fact that Yuri is currently too tired and disgruntled for it to come out as anything more than a grumble. “Also, no thanks. I would rather go for something fresh right now.”

“You wound me,” says Otabek. “Did you know how hard I worked on that mixtape?”

“Not hard enough.”

“What can I do to make you buy it?” 

Yuri rolls his bleary eyes, but decides to stop when they’re looking upwards in a spontaneous plea to the Lord for strength. Otabek is weird all the time, but it’s clear that he’s reached maximum, early morning weirdness if he’s decided to stretch a stupid joke like this beyond its lifespan. “Shut up. I’m not buying your mixtape.”

“I’ll name it after you,” he says with a wink so quick it is near invisible--his voice, too, still has no inflection, but Yuri can nonetheless hear the impishness. “I’ll do anything,” he says.

And it’s then, with the startling clarity that feels something like flicking on bright lights after being in a long dark in a dark room, he knows that this is his opportunity. Now, Otabek Altin gets his just dessert--may he have a long life, and may the guilt hit him like a freight train first. He forgets what “sleepy and pissed” even means--the sleepy part, anyhow--and he smirks in complete self-satisfaction.

“Anything?” Yuri says, and he lets the comment hang in the cyberspace that links them. The smirk is nowhere near sliding off his face. After a few seconds, Otabek twitches the left corner of his mouth sideways, which is his equivalent of a full-face blush in any other human. 

He pours his current annoyance of being awake so early into a big black cauldron. He mixes with it the gradual buildup of annoyance that has stemmed from this absurd bullshit of his Segregation from Otabek’s Almaty Life--he dumps the entire potion into his tone of voice as he drops the words:

“How about you take me to Almaty to meet your friends, then?”

At his reaction, Yuri is reminded, cheerfully, by his own mind, why he wants to marry Otabek so badly. Yes, he  _ expected  _ his face to be awash with shame, or to be frozen with shock, or for him to say “Yura…” softly and then weakly stammer out excuses and apologies in rotation.

Instead, Otabek looks  _ terrified.  _ It’s everything Yuri didn’t know he wanted. And isn’t that how you know the one you are to marry--when they give you what you need without even knowing? Lord, they say unrequited love is suffering, but it’s not all that bad when the love part is far more important to you than the unrequited part.

Yes, Otabek’s face is terrified and near-wild from sleep deprivation; his eyes are wide and the irises look all black over the grainy computer screen; he looks petrified, and in his state it would be impossible to say something (since his mouth, from fear, is now carved out of stone).

“I was bullshitting you about the other part, you know. I would probably buy your mixtape anyway, since best friends unconditionally support each other.” Yuri casually throws his leg back into a stretch. He looks comfortable and unthreatening, but Otabek still looks like he’s a twelve year old whose mother just discovered his porn supply--an experience which Yuri has much heard about, but never experienced.

“Best friends also,” Yuri says, “don’t deliberately keep a very large part of their life secret without any context--such as, their home city! The friends they talk about but refuse to introduce! Best friends would understand if it was a new friendship, but best friends don’t understand when it’s been years and you’re so part of each other’s life that a certain little brother asks you when you’ll be coming to the next family dinner! When a certain matriarch calls you to tell her approval of you! When a certain father calls you his fourth child!” He says it all rather matter-of-factly, all in the same general tone, but he can’t stop the sharp edge of his switchblade words.

Otabek, if anything, looks vaguely surprised that his family is so attached to Yuri. But instead of losing the terror from his face, or looking guilt ridden, or saying anything conciliatory in the slightest, he makes eye contact with Yuri through the screen and says a clear message in the Altin dialect of unspoken understanding: I fucked up, so what happens next is in your hands.

He still seems a bit resistant. Yuri isn’t going to complain. You can’t know all things in a person.

“Beka,” Yuri says, as the cauldron of bitterness finishes draining, leaving a gentle and pleading voice that holds a dangerous amount of the arguably infinite love Yuri has for Otabek. “Beka, I just want to know the people in your life.”

Yuri watches the emotional telltales that flit across his face as subtly as a wetland breeze. His right cheek tenses, and he slightly furrows his brows, and he presses his lips together for less than a second. On any other human, these are the normal ways a face moves. On Otabek Altin, each of these is like a painting of his thoughts.

“Okay,” says Otabek.

Yuri grins. “Nice. Thanks for letting me manipulate you.”

Otabek vanishes beneath the screen, and a defeated thump is enough to tell Yuri that he just hit his head on his desk-- _ thump. Thump-- _ repeatedly, apparently. “I’m about to steal your line.”

“Go ahead.”

“Sometimes, I really want to murder you.”

“Too late,” Yuri says. He’s giddy, and he doesn’t care that much in the first place, so he says something he definitely would not have when he was fifteen or sixteen, back when his hair wasn’t two feet long and he wasn’t six feet tall and his dick wasn’t big yet and he still had mild anger issues and severe abandonment issues: “We’re like an old married couple. We’re both too attached to do the deed.”

Otabek groans as if he’s having a charley horse. But the charley horse is this conversation, and Yuri’s the one who twinged his leg to make it happen.

“Anyway,” says Yuri, “Little Yosef will be  _ really  _ happy to see me.”

Otabek rises up from his desktop haven of moribundity; his forehead is pink from banging against the plastic, and his hair is mussed in the way that gives him a thin layer of bangs across his forehead. “Do you really talk to my little brother that much?”

“Yes,” says Yuri. “He’s a little shit. He takes after me. He likes to guilt trip me about living in Russia, and god, it works.”

“Aliya might propose to you,” Otabek says. “I’m not kidding.”

“She’s seventeen. I’m not marrying a kid.”

“You just turned eighteen a few months ago, and I am two and a half years older than you.”

“Well, that’s different.”

“әр түрлі.”

“Thanks for the Kazakh lesson. I already know that.”

“Kitoks.”

“What language is that?”

“Lithuanian.”

“And why the hell do you know that?”

“I--I  _ really  _ liked Thomas Harris novels when I was sixteen. I read them to be rebellious during English studies. I thought they were very well-written and suspenseful.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you can speak Lithuanian?”

“I can’t. Just a few words. Atstok means fuck off, since I know you were about to ask”--and Yuri was, indeed, about to ask.

So once again, like all of Otabek’s jetlag-drunk early morning calls, their words devolve into the nonsense only they can understand. Yuri doesn’t mind; he curls his blanket under his chin, and he feels surrounded by a warmth that can only be surpassed by heaven itself: the warmth of the blanket, and of Otabek’s sleepy rambles singing his heart to softness. 

He’s going to Almaty. It’s a good morning.

Yuri will be going to Almaty at the very beginning of August, and he will be staying there for two weeks. Obviously, he will be staying in Otabek’s apartment. 

He hasn’t been so genuinely and joyfully excited for something in quite a long time, or perhaps ever. And it’s not quite as sad as it sounds, for he’s felt joy and he’s felt excitement, but this is the sort of thing that feels like artistic Instagram photos and rich beautiful girls in aquamarine beaches. A very simple, very straightforward, very normal thing to be excited over: he’s finally visiting the homeland of his best-friend-and-love-of-his-life.

He’s so excited, in fact, that he needs to work off the excess energy. And this finds him in the neighborhood gym, having a weight-lifting contest with Mila, and losing terribly. Mila easily benches 75 kilos without breaking a sweat. Yuri benches 60 for only two sets before stopping, and cursing his parents, whoever and wherever they might be, for giving him the muscular predisposition of a runway model.

“How,” says Yuri, covered in an impressive sheen of sweat, and pausing for emphasis: “the  _ fuck  _ are you so strong?”

“It’s all in the name of my dream, Yura,” she says.

“That answers nothing.”

“And you look like a slug right now,” she counters, with a significant hand placed on her hips. And yes, he did fall immediately off of the bench and onto the floor, looking like a dramatic murder victim. “Don’t you wanna hear what my dream is?”

“Well, I can’t exactly run away right now.”

“To be an ice dancer,” she says, and her eyes turn to the lights on the gym ceiling, probably just so they’ll glint in her eyes perfectly. “Except I’ll turn around all those gender expectations, and I’ll be the one doing the lifts and taking the man’s role. There’s no rules against it, I don’t think. We’ll just blow all the competition away. Shock everyone.”

“You’re so gay,” says Yuri, paying more attention to his nails.

“This is what I mean!”--and she throws her hands in the air, impassioned. “Gender expectations. A woman can’t throw her skating partner--her  _ male  _ skating partner around without being gay! Am I not allowed to be strong?”

“Well, I mean, you’re right, it is bullshit. But you’re actually gay-ish. Bi. Like, openly.”

“Not the point, Yura!” Mila says, as she, in fact, points to Yuri. “On that note, if defying gender roles automatically makes you gay, then how about you become my skating partner? You know, to enforce stereotypes.” 

Yuri is deciding whether or not to tell her to, kindly, shut the fuck up. Then, however, she brightens as an idea clearly parasitizes her mind. “Actually, you  _ should  _ be my skating partner. I lift you all the time, and you’re like a brother, and we skate together, so we have excellent chemistry…”

At this, he now feels the need to tell her to, kindly, shut the fuck up. “If you would so kindly shut the fuck up, Ludmila,” he says. 

“Is that a no?”

“No, it’s a ‘I’ll consider it later, when I’m not a world champion men’s singles skater and I’m also not half dead on a gym floor.’” He pauses, and thinks lazily back on the conversation. Something sticks out to him, like a neon pink sports bra. “Also, who ever said that I’m gay?”

“Who ever had a quasi-romantic relationship with another guy?” As he makes to interrupt, she continues: “Another guy from Kazakhstan? Who you’re visiting in less than a week?”

“ _ Listen, _ ” he says emphatically. “I did not come here to get drilled on my fucking love life. Of which there is none. Otabek and I are just friends.”

And at the words ‘just friends,’ Mila falls beside him, exaggeratedly, a hand over her forehead: “Just friends! Oh, the terrible phrase, the wonderful phrase! The phrase that always means romance is about to happen. Love is in the air. I can smell it. It smells like a double espresso, which I know is Otabek’s favorite coffee because you don’t drink it yet you have a stock of it in your apartment. Just friends!”

“Holy shit! Can you also maybe stop hanging around Viktor so much?”

“Nah,” Mila says. “Viktor’s a fun guy. But that’s off topic.”

“Please, just drag me home or kill me. Or both. In any order. I know that if this conversation starts you won’t accept any answer but me saying that Otabek and I will be getting married in four years at most. I can’t deal with that right now.”

As Mila hauls him (easily, as they are, in fact, ideal skating partners) up, she makes a face of curiosity: “Four years at most? Interesting.”

“ _ Ludmila.” _

And so, energy burning with Mila turns out to be a bust, since he’s only physically exhausted and just as much, if not more, of an anxious inner mess as he was before. 

It comes to a peak on the actual day of the flight. It’s hot out, and it’s another average summer day in St. Petersburg. But to Yuri, for some reason, the entire city seems fresher and emptier, as if it’s perpetually the dawn. He feels like he’s set foot in a tropical resort. He feels like he could pluck a star from the night, attach it to the ceiling of a club, and dance with starlight as his disco ball. The nerves and the excitement and the happiness have been vibrating in him so quickly that it’s all just a light hum inside him.

It results in him bouncing his knee in the seat at the airport, a barely-there smile upon his lips. This must be a special day--even Aeroflot is on time. 

Yuuri and Viktor are sitting beside him, staring at him in abject wonder.

“Is it endorphins?” says Yuuri.

“Maybe adrenaline,” replies Viktor.

“Could be puberty,” Yuuri points out.

“Or maybe just love.”

Yuri isn’t deaf, and snaps at them-- “Shut up, you old farts. I’m just excited. God.”

“Well, at least we know it’s still him,” says Yuuri, as if Yuri isn’t even there. Yuri regrets every Thursday night for the past four or so years when he came over to their apartment to hang out. They didn’t deserve his friendship. 

The flight is announced; Yuri and his neo-parental figures and good friends say their goodbyes. 

“See you in two weeks, Young Fart,” says Yuuri, smiling, into his shoulder. 

“Yeah, Gena, we’ll miss you,” says Viktor when it’s his turn for a hug, not being one to miss out on nicknames. 

“I’m neither a sidekick nor a crocodile,” Yuri says in mock annoyance.

“Yes you are,” the couple replies in unison.

So Yuri sends off a text to Otabek ( _ see you in five hours, bitch)  _ and boards the plane with nothing in his carry-on but his earphones, his phone, and a good book to pass the time with (though he would end up sleeping the whole time, anyway). As the plane leaves, he glances briefly towards St. Petersburg. He feels like he’s crossing a bridge into another world, but it’s only a neighboring culturally rich ex-Soviet nation. 

Okay, then, he concedes to himself--he's crossing a bridge from his own life into another's.

He is, however, passed out with his head wedged between the seat and the window before he can finish that thought.

 


	2. In Which Otabek Gives Yuri Shit, and Then The Entire Altin Family Gives Otabek Shit Because All Is Fair In Love and War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What in procrastination?
> 
> To start, thank y'all so incredibly much for the bookmarks and kudos and comments and shit??? Wow, I live in a world full of very nice and appreciative readers... made me no shit bang this out in like three days, which is a new record for me, a Slothman.
> 
> Also lmao guess who's a bad friend and didn't even know my friend Emmalee had an ao3 account? (Hint-it's me) (Check out @Em_the_Lion if you like HTTYD. or if you don't. she's just lit ya know?)
> 
> Anyway this lil chapter clocked in at approximately 6900, which doesn't really apply to the story but my immature fuckass brain thinks its funny. Who needs a chapter summary when u can put it right in the chapter title?
> 
> So, enjoy the read, pals!!!! Love y'all, hope your weeks are fantastic

Yuri walks out of the plane and into Almaty International Airport. He slept for the whole five hour ride, and he dreamt of being mistaken for Yakov by everyone, including his own grandpa. His head feels like it’s filled with warm pudding. His hair, judging by the snide glances sent towards him, looks like absolute shit. 

And, leaning against the nearest pillar, and holding a poster-board sign that reads “I am not a bitch,” is Otabek.

Yuri, making his way sleepily toward him, blinks, affronted. “Okay, I get it. So you can’t respond to a text, but you can make a sign. With a curse on it. In public. Where there are children.”

“I don’t think that you should be talking about swearing in public,” Otabek replies honestly and fondly. On cue, he tucks the poster under his arm. “Also, you know I’m one for grand romantic gestures.”

_ Romantic _ , says Yuri’s brain unhelpfully.  _ Just friends,  _ says Mila’s voice, then, just to be even more unhelpful. His finely-tuned rationality, however,  _ is _ feeling helpful, and so he says aloud, “Damn, you’re absolutely right. ‘I am not a bitch.’ Most romantic thing ever done. I’m swooning. Marry me now.”

And maybe his real feelings start to bleed through his words by the end. How can he help, though, but be completely honest around Otabek?

“We’ve established that we’re both way too young to get married,” Otabek says, deadpan, in a clear continuation of their comfortable sarcasm. “Maybe ask again when you can legally drink here in Kazakhstan.”

“Get off your high horse, bitch,  _ you  _ can’t even drink here legally yet.”

“We’ve also established that I am not a bitch.” To demonstrate his point, Otabek dutifully pulls out his poster again and taps it.

Since this conversation could really only become cyclical at this point, they let it fade away into an effortless silence; then, with even less effort, ecstatic grins light up both of their faces. Yuri feels the now-familiar hum of childlike delight dance in the back of his mind.

“Hey, by the way,” Yuri says, almost accented with the strength of his smile.

“Hey to you too,” replies Otabek. His eyes are crinkly around the outside; Yuri personally believes that whenever he smiles, his laughter lines capture the sunlight. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Oh, shut up,” Yuri says, rolling his eyes. “You left St. Petersburg, what, two weeks ago?”

“Every day without you strangles my heart.”

“Shut up!” He laughs freely, and he lightly bites his wrist bone, as is his habit whenever he laughs. His eye roll is marginally less successful this time. “Damn, you’re so dramatic. We even Skyped, like, all the time!”

Otabek doesn’t reply, and keeps his face completely stoic. But Yuri knows that this face is the Otabek equivalent of a full-fledged, toddler-level pout. 

So with one last snort, he adds, “Alright--I missed you too, Beka.”

And with that, Otabek’s stoic pout morphs into a satisfied half smile. He drapes a solid arm around Yuri’s shoulder (with only minimal strain from the height difference), and begins steering them in the direction of the luggage claim. “Good. Welcome to Almaty.”

“Consider me welcomed,” says Yuri. “Did you bring the bike? You brought the bike, right?”

“Did you or did you not bring a suitcase here?” Otabek says plaintively. “Or do you want to drag it along behind the bike?”

“You know what? Shut up. I’m still half asleep.”

Otabek does not, in fact, shut up, and continues to give Yuri shit as only he can as they wander through the crowded halls of the airport. Yuri reads the Kazakh signs and window decals with fascination: he’s basically fluent in Kazakh at this point, and obviously he can read Cyrillic, but he’s never seen them put together in a natural setting. Another world, indeed.

As they pass by a bookshop, Yuri makes them stop, and he points out the books whose titles he can’t understand, and Otabek translates for him. 

He grabs his suitcase, which as a remnant from his fifteen-year-old self, is in cheetah print. History, he tells himself, must be remembered, so it won’t be repeated.

Then, out of the airport, they step into the perfect warmth of the day; it is noon, and the blue of the sky is made pale by the brilliant sunlight, and a wild breeze gallops across the flat land. Over the green landing strips and plains, mountains stand their guard on the horizon. Almaty is a bustling mass only fifteen kilometers before them.

Otabek has, apparently, kept a taxi waiting for him this whole time, and Yuri feels only mildly regretful that he’s made the poor driver sit there for so long. Nonetheless, the driver shoots Otabek somewhat of a dirty look as they settle into their seats. 

“It’s a lovely day, isn’t it, sir?” Otabek says, completely uncaring, and states the destination.

The driver sighs, low and long-suffering, and shuts the cheap plastic partition as he pulls out of the airport.

Almaty is, indeed, like another world--on the outskirts of the city, Yuri recognizes the drab Soviet-era apartment buildings like giant cement blocks. Those blocks are in St. Petersburg. They are in Moscow. They are everywhere but the smallest of Russian villages; they ground him, like a reminder of home.

But it’s what surrounds the blocks that smother Almaty in a dreamlike unreality. Mosques and unfamiliar architecture poke up around the center; the city is dappled with the green of parks. And around the southeast, the edges of the city are flanked by jagged, ice-thick peaks. 

Almaty, to Yuri, seems like it is gradually taken over by song--it is calm, at first, but then it is cut by high buildings, undulating with hills, pulsing with mountains. It’s pretty fitting that Otabek is a DJ. He lives in a city made of music.

Yuri glances over to Otabek. He’s idly playing with a hair on his jaw that he probably forgot to shave this morning, and watching the pavement hurtle by.

“Almaty is like a Calvin Harris music video,” Yuri says bluntly.

He startles back into attention at the words, and he peers pensively through the window, as if trying to see the comparison. “I mean, you’re not wrong,” Otabek says. “But I’m also not kidding when I say I’ve literally never heard that comparison before.”

“I like it.” Yuri puts no thought into his words, as per usual: “It reminds me of you. It’s like what you’d be like if you were a city.”

“That’s pretty convenient,” Otabek says. “Considering I was born and raised here.”

“I don’t need your sass right now, Altin.” He leans back against the window, but continues to talk. “By the way, what are we doing after I actually get to your apartment? Are we chilling or something? I could really use a nap.”

“Ah,” says Otabek. “I almost forgot. Jet lag.”

“It’s been two weeks, you can’t have  _ forgott-- _ ”

“You probably want to sleep it out, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Otabek says flippantly. “Too bad. We’re dropping your stuff, and then we’re heading over to my family’s place. I think my family’s more excited about this than we are, believe it or not.”

“Oh, I believe it”--and Yuri remembers everything about marriage to Aliya, and Little Yosef’s desperate insistence that Yuri was blood family, and Grandma Altin’s cryptic acceptance. “I definitely fucking believe it.”

“A fair warning--they might throw a party.”

He scoffs. “Please. Who can plan a party in, like, an hour?”

Otabek makes a skeptical, high pitched “eh” in the back of his throat, and Yuri knows from God, fate, or common sense that he would soon probably be eating his own words (as well as some good Kazakh food, likely)

 

 

But before any of that could come to pass, he has to drop his stuff at Otabek’s place.

If Otabek’s long-winded description explained anything well at all, Otabek’s apartment was a stroke of economic genius. See, a more shabby Soviet block had rooms being sold for ridiculously cheap prices. Thus, Otabek had decided to buy not one but  _ two  _ flats in the building, all for less money than a good apartment in a nicer building would have gone. He renovated it for the low low price of free with the help of his handyman cousins, and in the meanwhile, the block became more chic, and more in demand, and the market value rose, and all of the sudden, Otabek Altin was in possession of a very nice, very coveted apartment that he could probably sell with significant revenue.

Yuri was present via Skype throughout this whole process, and he still doesn’t understand it. What he did grasp, though, was that Otabek was an economist by the tender age of nineteen.

And given the long, long list of things Otabek continually turns out to be talented at, this one is simply unfair.

“You’re so smart with this shit,” Yuri had complained once, “and I’m constantly half broke.”

“I could maybe become a banker or something when I’m retired from skating,” he told Yuri seriously. “More likely, work in the stock industry. It’s strongest in Almaty.”

“Wanna know what you are? A capitalist pig.”

“Capitalism does not own me, Yura. I am the one who controls it when I please.”

Anyhow, that’s the story of Otabek’s apartment and his probable future of moneyed success, and Yuri remembers it deeply as they walk through the manicured front lawn of the renovated block, and up the many, many stairs to the middle floor, and to the white door of his flat.

His apartment has rough concrete walls, and it’s filled with color--the kitchen is a mustard yellow, and the living room is a rich blue, and the bathroom is magenta, and the furniture is haphazardly painted in crazy colors. But it’s simple, and fashionable, and evidently lived in, for messy stacks of books claim an entire corner of the room, and family photographs line the walls (Yuri notices himself in a good many of them). Cacti are on windowsills. Big, thick blankets are piled on the sofa. A piano that looks like it’s about to collapse peers through the wall-height windows. 

Yuri has seen this all through a Skype tour when it was done renovating, but it’s somewhat different in person. It seems more real. It smells like home-cooked dinners and Otabek’s favorite cologne.

It feels like the kind of place Yuri would wake up every morning in, in some idealist fantasy--in his most comfortable pajamas, in Otabek’s bed. A veterinarian like he’s always wanted to be, if he weren’t a skater. A husband. A child or two in the other half of the flat. His life would feel like spring flowers and morning dew. 

He quickly snaps himself out of his idealist fantasy--he should be having those in the asscrack hours of the night, not literally right in front of the one he loves.

Otabek flings his suitcase onto the sofa and makes his way to the kitchen, where he immediately sets to washing his hands. “You want anything?”

“What’s the most caffeinated shit you have?”

“I’m glad you asked.” He reaches into a corner cabinet, and he pulls out a ceramic mug of sorts, a silver straw, and a substance that looks somewhere between woodchips and weed. Yuri squints at him in bewilderment. “This is mate,” Otabek explains. “It’s Argentinian tea. It’s basically caffeine itself.”

“It looks like wood chips and weed,” says Yuri, since he feels that is a thought that needs to be said. “Also, you’re Kazakh. How did you get Argentinian tea?”

“I was hanging out with an Argentinian skater at the Four Continents a few years back. He made himself a cup, poured in half a bottle of fernet, chugged it, and got wasted. He was an asshole, so I stole it.”

“Oh, Barto? You told me about him,” says Yuri. Actually, when Yuri had asked how the 4CC had gone, Otabek just said the word ‘Barto’ in a dark and vengeful tone. One didn’t need to be fluent in the Altin dialect of unspoken understanding to interpret that correctly. “What did he even do to piss you off?”

“He was harassing Sabahat,” he says.

Yes, Sabahat--Otabek’s brief and casual Uzbek girlfriend when he was nineteen. Yuri had liked her, fundamentally, as a person: she’d treated him as an equal, and she liked to wear brightly-colored headscarves, and she could also do the worm and rap at least half of Drake’s songs (while purposely leaving out the curses). But about a month later, Otabek broke up with her abruptly, and with no explanation, and she wouldn’t say anything, either.

But despite his propensity to be a nosy little bitch when it comes to, say, Mila, or his ballet friend Alexei, Yuri respects Otabek’s privacy, and to this day hasn’t asked.

He curls his lip in abject disgust. “What the fuck? You should have stolen his skates, too. Or socked him in the face. Both would be cool.”

Otabek laughs. “Oh, I didn’t need to do that. Sabahat broke his nose.”

He smiles in distant pride. She really had been cool. “Thank God you two didn’t break up with a screaming match or some shit. You would be fucking dead, and I would be a  _ lot  _ lonelier.”

Otabek’s face is quickly overtaken by his I-Am-About-To-Make-A-Joke-That-Seems-Uncharacteristic-For-Me face, and Yuri is quick to shut it down. “If you hit me with fatalistic humor right now, I swear I  _ will  _ murder you.”

“It was worth a try.” He shrugs, and holds up the mate in unspoken question.

“I’m good,” says Yuri. “Now that I know where you got it, I’m pretty sure it will just taste like ass.”

Then, Otabek’s face scrunches up completely, and he turns his chin down, and he’s cracking up. Yuri loves to watch him laugh. He’s seen a lot of childhood photos, and Otabek grew up with a chronically chubby face that made him look like a Siberian chipmunk--until puberty, and his switchblade jawline was birthed out of nowhere. His face regains a little bit of its former chubbiness when he laughs.

It’s vindication: if Yuri had to miss out on Otabek’s childhood, he at least can catch a glimpse of it by being his hilarious self. 

“I’ll just make some coffee then.”

“You do that.”

The coffee is drank, and Yuri narrowly avoids passing out on the sofa, and he puts on clothes that are vaguely nicer than the sweatpants he wore on the plane. In the fresh quiet of Otabek’s apartment, time slides by rapidly, and it’s not until he’s clambering onto the back of the bike that he realizes he’s about to meet Otabek’s family.

Too, it’s not until that moment that he realizes that, despite all the video calls and stories, he’s terrified to meet them. 

What if they decide he’s a piece of shit in real life? What if they notice how abnormally thin he is? What if they disapprove of his mannerisms? What if they no longer want him to be a part of Otabek’s life?

“Holy shit,” he says, staring blankly at the ground of the apartment garage.

“What?” says Otabek loudly, as the motorcycle’s engine isn’t the quietest of creatures.

“I said holy shit!” Yuri shouts into his ear.

Otabek lets go of the bike handle, and reaches back, and takes Yuri’s hand; his are warm, even through the leather. Yuri knows what he’s saying without words, as always, but Otabek half-yells it through the rumble of the engine anyhow. “You have nothing to worry about,” he says. “You know that they love you. That we love you, that I love you. You’re family.” And he squeezes Yuri’s hand very, very tightly before letting it go; and then, he steps on it. 

Yuri’s not a superhuman of emotion, so the fear doesn’t abate in the slightest. But at least his rational thoughts can be certain that the fear is stupid. 

The sensation of air whipping past him was a wild feeling that first time, in Barcelona, and it has been a wild feeling every infinite time after, and it is wild now. Yuri feels like a starship when he rides a bike: like he’s hurtling at warp speed and letting the whole universe gather behind him. 

It’s all very exciting, but jet lag stops for no eighteen-year-old world champion figure skater. Yuri lays his head on Otabek’s back and dozes ever so slightly. The lights and noises blend like paint on a pallet.

In that peaceful state, he allows his heart to absorb the “I love you.” It’s like a balm, but it is also Tantalus’ pool of lifegiving water. It’s the words he craves, but not quite the meaning. False hope has a nasty aftertaste.

 

 

The Altins live in a quaint blue-roofed townhouse in the quieter sector of the city. A gnarled tree stands in the front lot, hung with a swing and beaded decorations, with stripes of bright paint around the trunk. Some beat up bicycles are chained to the handrail.

Otabek lets the engine rumble down to death. He pulls off his helmet, shakes his head until his hair falls artfully into his trademark messy middle part. Then, he reaches behind him and lightly slaps Yuri, who’s still resting on his back, into wakefulness.

“I’m already awake, asshole,” Yuri mumbles into Otabek’s jacket.

“Then take off your helmet, Yura,” he says. He slaps Yuri again, just to be a shit. 

“Asshole!”

“You really do need to get up, you know. Or else I might have to take off your helmet for you.” To demonstrate, he tugs a bit on the bottom of the helmet.

“Ugh,” says Yuri, then says it again for dramatic effect. “Ugh. You’re a dick, Altin. I’m gonna steal this bike and keep you locked out of your own apartment.”

“Careful with the language. We’re here.”

A bolt of adrenaline shoots through Yuri’s body, triggers his alpha and beta receptors, and increases the blood flow to his muscles, makes his heart beat faster, dilates his pupils, and increases his blood sugar--what really happens is that he’s off of Otabek’s back and whipping off his helmet in the span of a single eye blink.

His hair, he’s sure, is sticking up in a variety of different directions, and he knows he’s got that stupid wide-eyed, crazy, I-just-got-shocked-by-my-own-endocrine-system look on his face.

Otabek smiles at him nonetheless. You’re a dork, he says fondly, without opening his mouth once.

And you’re an asshole, Yuri says, aphonic and even more fond.

A sudden movement captures both their attention: a little face knocks up against a front window of the house. It beams in delight, and then suddenly the front door is thrown open, and out dashes Little Yosef.

Yuri’s heart twists a little bit. Little Yosef is even littler in person.

“Mama! Papa! Otabek’s here!” he cries. He then leans forward and squints exaggeratedly. “And--it’s Yuri!” His face is overcome with joy. “Yuri’s finally here!” the young boy sings, “Finally! Yes! Yuri, Yuri, Yuri!” 

And it’s here, in this moment, that Yuri’s fear truly begins to fade. 

Little Yosef seems to have a moment of indecision between running to them and running to grab his family, and it manifests with him dancing on tiptoes, shouting, “Mama! Papa! Aliya! Come outside!” 

That’s seemingly enough for him, and Yuri’s hardly stood off of the bike before a high voice cries “Yuri!” and a little body is clinging to him like a tree.

A delighted laugh escapes him; he winds his arms to pull Little Yosef into a proper hug. “Hello, Little Yosef!” he says.

“Hi Yuri!” says Little Yosef brightly. “I’m so glad you’re finally here. Did you know that I was starting to think that you weren’t real? It was a really big, uh, conspiracy. But not even Aunt Katerina believed me and Aunt Katerina believes in aliens! I’m so glad I was wrong. It would be so sad if you didn’t exist!”

“No, no, I’m definitely real,” says Yuri.

“What, no hug for your own brother, Little Yosef?” says Otabek.

Little Yosef glares at him accusingly. “I see you all the time, Beka. Also, I’m not little!”

“Yuri was just calling you Little Yosef, and you’re not yelling at him,” Otabek points out.

“That’s  _ different.  _ Yuri can call me little because he’s  _ big  _ and  _ tall,  _ just like Bibigul!” And the boy points emphatically to the tree in the front yard.

“You named your tree Bibigul?” Yuri says curiously.

“Of course!” says Little Yosef.

“A tree is much more reliable a companion than any dog or cat,” intones Otabek dutifully.

Yuri smiles mischievously. Otabek says that in such a familiar way that he knows he said it a thousand times in his childhood. “Alright, what about a best friend? How’s that compared to a tree?”

He rubs his chin thoughtfully. “A hard question. Best friends  _ are  _ more valuable, but at least trees don’t give me sass at all possible times.”

“Wow.” Yuri turns back to Little Yosef, who still clings stubbornly to his torso. “Yosef, can you believe that your brother is giving me up in exchange for a tree?” 

Little Yosef’s eyes grow suddenly wide with fear, and he hops off of Yuri, and over to Otabek, whose shirt hem he tugs desperately. “No!” he begs, “Don’t drop Yuri for a tree! I’ll marry Bibigul, just stay with Yuri, please!”

As Yuri’s lovesick Senses are finely attuned to almost all of Otabek’s behavior, he’s quick to notice the near imperceptible dusting of pink that appears across his cheeks. “I’m just joking, Little Yosef,” he says. “I’m not going to ditch Yuri for Bibigul.”

Little Yosef nods in satisfaction, and he’s about to say something else when a clarion voice cuts over the front yard. 

“Yosef! Why do you keep them out by the street. Sons, come in, come in!” says Otabek’s mother. His father stands behind her; Aliya leans casually against the doorframe.

Yuri’s not sure whether ‘sons’ refers to Otabek and Little Yosef only, or if it extends to him as well, but he nonetheless follows his best friend and his little brother to the door. 

“Mama, Papa, Aliya, look!” says Little Yosef, wrapping his arms around his mother’s leg. “It’s Yuri! Meet Yuri!”

He feels a rerunning remnant of his fear. “Hello, Mrs. Altin. Hello, Mr. Altin,” he says politely, and then as a casual side-note, “Hey, Aliya.”

He isn’t sure what he was supposed to expect, but then Mrs. Altin smiles warmly, and Mr. Altin grins boisterously, brightly enough to light half the city--and it’s he who speaks first. “What are these formalities, Yuri?” he says broadly. “Come over here, my son--this is a joyous occasion!”

So Yuri, a bit numbly, walks forward into the waiting embrace of the four Altins he’d never even met in person before. He feels very warm, and very safe, and of course, as always, Otabek is there at his right hand, deceptively stoic and unfailingly supportive, resting his chin on his shoulder. 

“Hey, Yuri,” says Aliya, from Yuri’s other side.

“A joyous occasion,” repeats Mr. Altin, to the whole family, as if explaining a riveting tale. “Our child has come home at last!”

 

 

Yuri does not have parents that you might read about in the textbooks.

He knows who his mother is, and he knows the story of how he was born. His mother was a model--and yes, she is where he got his lithe and unearthly thin body, and his androgynous beauty, and his golden hair, and his greenish eyes. She liked fame. She lives on the covers of obsolescent Vogue Russia issues from the previous millennium in outfits that no one would be caught dead in today. She liked to live the wild, famous life even more, with its opulence and nightclubs and gossip and sex and drink and pills. 

And it was the latter half of the wild life--the last three, precisely--that led her to becoming pregnant, having Yuri, and vanishing from the face of the earth. 

According to his late great-aunt Varvara, his father was a member of a successful drug ring in Moscow. His mother had told her, apparently, that he was tall and attractive, and she just had to. So his height, then, came from his father.

Yuri, personally, wasn’t that emotionally scarred from the lack of real parents. He has a grandfather. He has Yakov and Lilia, though they’re really only in the skating context of his life. He has Viktor and Yuuri, though the older he gets, the more like older siblings and less like parents they seem to become.

He has never felt like there is something wrong about him, or that his emotional development was stunted, or that he’s bereft without a mother and father’s influence to nurture him in a Russian Orthodox Christian manner. But he probably romanticizes family more than anyone else in the entire world.

It’s a little cheesy, but he feels a shift within himself, into a new gear, the moment the Altins become his family.

 

 

He won’t think this until three Grand Prix golds, one college degree in pre-med, and countless revelations later (so: very far away), but when he’s wedded to Otabek, he doesn’t feel like he’s gained a new family. He’ll have had this one for a while.

 

Yuri is absolutely eating his own words about the party thing.

Immediately on his (now)  _ dad’s  _ (blessedly, and apparently) declaration, his (now, blessedly, and apparently)  _ mom  _ declares it occasion for a feast.

So the parents dash inside to make phone calls and whip out ingredients, with Little Yosef hot on their heels (since it’s all very thrilling), and Yuri is left to stand on the doorstep with his best friend and his best friend’s sister flanking him on either side, staring blankly after them.

“What,” he says flatly.

“Welcome to the family, I guess,” says Aliya nonchalantly.

“I didn’t even  _ do  _ anything,” he says. “What the, uh, heck?”

“Yuri, you can totally swear around me, I’m literally one year younger than you,” says Aliya, but at the same time, Otabek is nudging him gently, saying, “I told you you had nothing to be worried about.”

“Yeah, I can kind of see that,” he responds numbly.

“Just wait until it’s all put together,” says Otabek. “You’ll want to give my parents a sparkling gold nugget by the end of all this.”

“Beka,” says Yuri. “Do you have to bring up that up now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really have to give me shit in the most sensitive of moments?”

“I live to give you shit, Yura. It’s my passion.”

“I thought skating was your passion.”

“Skating has less of a reward.”

“And what kind of reward do you think you can get from giving me shit?”

“A sparkling--”

“Don’t.”

“--gold nugget.”

“Why even bother, Aliya?” Aliya mutters to herself. “Why even bother trying to talk when they’re in their own little bubble?” She speaks up, clearing her throat expectantly. “What’s this gold nugget thing I’m hearing about?”

“It’s nothing,” Yuri says, as Otabek just laughs and laughs beside him.

He takes back his previous statement--he  _ hates  _ unrequited love, especially when it’s not only unrequited, but you’re also half convinced that you’re deep in hate instead of love.

“Yura,” says Otabek. “Last year, at Russian Championships, got a gold medal. And he was so exhausted and dehydrated after his free--in the kiss and cry, an interviewer asked him a question about his costume or something. What was it?”

“I will murder you, Altin.”

“Definitely about his costume. I think it was about what specific vision inspired it. But then...then he just grabbed the microphone out of the interviewer’s hands, and he yelled into it, ‘I’m so proud that I won a shining gold nugget!’”

“That’s incredible,” Aliya tells Yuri. “That’s drunk goals.”

“I wasn’t drunk!”

“I still have the clip saved on my phone,” continues Otabek, almost dreamily. “I watch it whenever I feel down or I miss him.”

“Did you mean from the moment you touch down in Almaty to the moment you go back to St. Petersburg?” Aliya snipes.

“Don’t be ignorant, sister,” Otabek says quickly, and concludes: “It always makes me laugh, but it makes me miss him even more, because I’m definitely missing so many iconic moments like that.”

“Aww. Because you love that ache in your heart,” says Aliya sweetly.

“I regret our shared genes.”

“To be honest, whenever you go to Almaty, I always imagine you lifting weights, reading, remixing, and riding the bike. On repeat.” Yuri shrugs. “I don’t know. Your Almaty life seems like such a void, especially since you don’t say anything about your friends.”

Aliya laughs and Otabek sighs. “I’m making my amends now, Yura.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m just giving you shit now.”

“You three!” Mrs. Altin appears, suddenly, in the doorway. Yuri suppresses a heart attack. Otabek and Aliya, seemingly, are unaffected. “Why are you standing outside being useless? Come inside and make the tea!”

“Sorry, mom,” says Aliya. “Beka here was telling me some great stories about Yuri.”

“Really?” she replies, in a distant way that might have implied interest if she weren’t so busy. “You’ll have to tell us all at the dinner table later.” Then, she’s disappeared back inside, presumably back to the kitchen, from which the scent of meats and herbs cooking churns the summer air.

“She won’t forget,” Aliya cheerfully informs him.

Yuri takes a deep and dignified breath. He’s grace and poise personified, he tells himself. He has risen not only above who he once was, but also above every-fucking-one else. He won’t lose his temper. Instead, with the composure of Lilia at any given moment, he turns to the girl and says, “I regret our shared association.”

“Aww. You’re gonna make Beka cry,” she says. And before Otabek can tell her off as he’s been doing, and before Yuri can express or even absorb his confusion, she winks, and says, “C’mon, you two, let’s go prepare tea.”

The inside of the Altin household is much like the inside of Otabek’s apartment: it’s just short of cluttered, and it’s full of color and warmth. The kitchen, though, is abuzz with activity. His father is cutting and mixing vegetables, and his mother, tenderizing meat.

Thankfully, Yuri is spared the brunt of the tea preparing. He sets out the cups, and then he returns to Otabek’s side, where they talk about nothing in particular for a while.

Then they hear it: like a stampede of wild horses, feet pound the front step and come in without asking; jovial voices rise above the sound of the cooking food and drown out Yuri’s words: “If I let you braid my hair will you let me put yours in a mohawk--what’s all that?”

“Ah,” says Otabek. “That would be the rest of the Altins.”

And so, Yuri meets the countless aunts and uncles and second cousins, and cousin Aigerim with her scientist girlfriend, and cousin Araily, whom Little Yosef looks a lot like, and Grandpa Sultan, who is the father of neither Mr. nor Mrs. Altin, and so whose relation to the family is very unclear. They all have this in common: that they are uncommonly beautiful, young and old, man and woman, with the same piercing eyes and cutting jaws, with the same strong noses and handsome features. He thinks that when Mila once mentioned an “attractive family,” Otabek must have been laughing inside. He’s never seen a line of such concentrated good looks as he sees here.

His knees go a little bit weak when he encounters the Matriarch, the grandmother herself--but she only, bafflingly, grasps his forearm soundly and says, “Even more a beauty, and even stronger, in person! Grandson, you must not waste any time.”

He glances at Otabek questioningly.  _ What does she mean? _

Otabek lets out a pained whine. It translates, in their unspoken language, to exactly the same thing.

They sit--all together, somehow, they fit--at the wide table; first, the tea is served, with all its ceremony; then comes the servings of food, piled on plates that dribble cooking grease, swirling steam with delicious scents. All--men and women alike, eat with their fingers, and talk loudly as they do. It’s boisterous and buoyant and wonderful, and Yuri keenly feels the revelry as he rarely has before.

The talk, of course, inevitably turns to Yuri, the reason why the party was thrown, but oddly enough, the questions are directed, too, to Otabek.

“So!” says the Matriarch cheerfully. “Is this feast being held for the reason that all of us, I believe,  _ hope  _ it’s being held?” At this, the entire table noisily agrees, and holds up their cups. 

It took Yuri’s finely tuned lovesick Senses to detect Otabek’s blush before. It does not take finely tuned Senses, or, in fact, anything but even 11/20 vision to see that Otabek turns absolutely scarlet at this.

“Grandmother, no,” he protests.

“Ah, you cannot blame me, grandson. I was told by your mother over the telephone that Yuri was a new son of hers. I could only hope for the best!”

Otabek looks vaguely like he’s being delivered a death sentence. His face is redder than anything Yuri has ever, in four whole years, seen on him.

Aliya decides, from the other end of the table, that it would be a wondrous time to pitch in: “Ah, for future reference, Beka, maybe a way to avoid confusion would be to stop talking your dreams constantly!” And the table, again, erupts in laughter.

Yuri feels almost as bad for Otabek as he is confused--surely, it can’t be a bad thing that Otabek shares his dreams with his family--or, at least, not bad enough that now he looks like he’s on the brink of explosion. He’s tempted to lean over to him and whisper for clarification, but considering the scrutiny the poor man seems to be under, it would probably be unwise.

Instead, he decides to offer silent comfort; he slides his unused right hand out of his pocket and into Otabek’s unused left hand, which sits on the bench. He squeezes it reassuringly.

But for some reason, this doesn’t serve to comfort him at all, and instead makes him seem even more tense. 

“Ah, but enough of teasing Beka,” says Grandpa Sultan. “Let’s get to know Yuri himself! Yuri, how are you finding Almaty?”

The attention shifts to him, and Yuri does his best to keep it from unnerving him (thankfully, it’s successful--he’s always been comfortable before the eyes of many).

“Well,” he says. “I’ve only been here since about noon, but I really like it! It’s a much more lively city--I appreciate the mountains, too.”

“Good, good,” says Grandpa Sultan. There’s a peculiar glint about his eye. “Now, would you ever see yourself living here?”

Yuri shrugs. “Yes, I guess.” He tries to shake the modern casualty of his tone. “I have to train in St. Petersburg for ice skating, so I wouldn’t be able to until retirement.”

“Well, I’m glad you would!” Grandpa Sultan says emphatically. “We would have a bit of a problem if you didn’t, am I wrong, Beka?”

Otabek’s blush, which had been slowly fading, comes back full force. 

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Yuri murmurs.

And for some reason, more than the hand hold, these words calm Otabek back to a sane level of redness in his cheeks.

Araily, seated next to Aliya, mimes wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

All through the dinner, every Altin throws these remarks to Otabek, who instantly reddens and goes silent. Yuri doesn’t think much of it except to not understand it--he thinks of the food instead. There is beshbarmak and kebab and manti, and although Yuri and Otabek don’t eat much of it for their skating diets, what they do eat is rich and flavorful, and to Yuri, tastes almost like the summer itself.

The party goes until the sunset, golden and overwhelming in its own way, has passed, and through of the open back door of the townhouse, a cool nighttime breeze and the navy of the evening sky spill.

Then, the relatives gather themselves up, and say their goodbyes, and then, they vanish right back out the front door and into the dark summer’s eve. Their voices fade softly.

In that silence left behind, Yuri and Otabek and Mr. and Mrs. Altin and Aliya clear the dishes. Yuri insists on washing them, since he was useless before at preparing the meal. So, while he washes and Otabek dries, he finally has the chance to ask what the hell was going on at dinner.

“So,” he says. “What the fuck was up with your entire family giving you shit? What were they even giving you shit about?”

“It’s, ah--” Otabek rubs at his jaw. “I’m sorry, Yura--you’re my best friend, and I like to tell you everything, but I’m not really sure how you’d react to me telling you this.”

“You do know that just got me more curious than if you’d said nothing, right?” Yuri says. When the pink starts returning to Otabek’s face, he smiles and relents. “No, really, I won’t ask. You’ve got your secrets. I get that. But you  _ know  _ you can trust me with anything. I don’t think anything you can say would be more embarrassing than that thing I told you about the diarrhea.”

Otabek’s nose crinkles. “That’s fair.”

“But hey,” he says cheekily. “If you’re not gonna tell me whatever all that was, at least I’m finally fucking meeting your friends. Finally. Closure. After like three and a half years.”

Otabek groans. “Damn it,” he says.

“Language.”

“You swear ten times more than me.”

“But I’m Russian!”

He groans again. “My friends are going to be ten times worse, probably. And less subtle, too.”

“Wait. So this secret thing you’ve got going on, that has the ability to turn you into a mess--your friends know about it too?” A laugh falls out of Yuri’s throat. “That’s  _ classic _ . I think I’m the only one on your side here.”

“But--” Otabek lets out a sigh of resignation. “Okay. I’ll tell you one thing. You know how I, um. How I sometimes talk a lot about the things I really love?”

“Nope. No idea. It’s not like only last week you talked for about an hour about how everyone thinks you’re so bad, but you just like to combine fashion and function. Yeah, and it’s definitely not like you came into my room last St. Petersburg trip so you could talk about songwriting for literal hours. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“How many examples of me doing it do you even  _ have? _ ”

“At least a bookful.”

“Anyway,” Otabek continues solemnly. “It has to do with that.” There’s a moment of silence, before:

“Wow,” says Aliya. “He’s so deep into talking about it that he’ll talk about talking about it with the talk of the talking itself.”

“Where did you come from?” hissed Yuri, clutching a hand over his heart. “Also, I know my Kazakh isn’t exactly fluent, but I’m pretty sure what you just said is complete nonsense.”

“Thank the Father Above for vagueness,” she says vaguely. Then, she turns to Otabek, and winks incredibly dramatically.

Otabek sighs. “Yura,” he says. “I’m about to steal your line.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Sometimes,” says Otabek, “I really want to kill you, sister.”

“The feeling is mutual,” says Aliya fondly. She steps back to look at them both. “I figure you two are heading out soon?”

Yuri looks at Otabek, who looks in turn at Yuri-- _ what do you want to do? No, what do  _ you  _ want to do?-- _ who in turn faces Aliya and says, “Actually, I think we’ll stick around for a little bit. I’d like some quality bonding time with all of you.”

So they light a fire on the back patio, and the six of them eat and drink and talk together for a long time afterwards, even as Little Yosef falls asleep on his mother’s lap. 

 

Yuri’s life is, fundamentally, made of ice. He skates the ice for hours and hours on end; the ice is how he earns a living; the ice is where he earns his fame. He has somewhat of an icy persona, at least to the camera; he is gruff and cold to most. He is described as an icy beauty--his pale skin and hair and sharp eyes.

Tonight, he feels warm inside. Warm, like an embrace he can melt into. Warm, like good home cooked meals, and warm drinks, and easy company. Warmth is not all that familiar to him.

He ponders on it even as Otabek drives them back to his apartment, even as they say goodnight, even as he lies in the guest bed and wishes he was sleeping with (not like that) the love of his life right now.

 

As he drifts off to sleep, he concludes: it must be his new family, or something. Maybe it's an Almaty thing. Maybe it's the summer. Maybe it's just Otabek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little thing that I, the writer, probably should have fixed: just assume, unless otherwise stated, that the language spoken in chapter one is Russian, and that in Almaty Yuri's speaking primarily that one Russian-Kazakh blend that Almatinians Do (I think it's called Shala Kazakh but I could be very wrong)
> 
> Anyway I hope y'all enjoyed! I was #blessed with not one but TWO snow days this week, which was probably why I managed to write this shit so fast. I mean I hope I can do the same thing with the next chapter but tbh? It'll probably be up like Sunday to a week from now
> 
> Haha also fun fact of the day: I subscribed my bff to the fake news site clickhole.com, and as revenge, the asshole subscribed me to this weird Russian website called kudototam.ru and ???? I have no idea what it is???? A forum???? It sends me pictures of llamas like three times a day or like links me to Russian doll museums????????? and gives me inspirational Russian quotes???????????????? I admit... she wins this round...
> 
> Bye love y'all!!!


	3. In Which Yuri Meets the Mischievous Friends, And It's Basically Just As Bad As Otabek Feared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, my name is Erin, I'm sixteen, six feet tall, I was the horse girl in third grade, and I'm a slow posting piece of shit!
> 
> I kid, I don't actually hate myself. But I literally am so sorry that it's taken me, what, two months? To post another chapter. Honestly, what the heck, @ me? 
> 
> But as stupid as it sounds, I have actually consistently been writing. But then I get another juicy scene idea out of n o w h e r e and I just gotta write it down, you know? If I waited to post the full chapter, it would clock in at like 15k and I'm not even remotely joking. So instead, I'm just gonna put in my 6.5k mini chapter and hope y'all like it as much as I like y'all!
> 
> Some actual notes: 
> 
> -So fun fact: America is not, apparently, the only country with a legal drinking age of twenty-one. What are the odds that one of the others is Kazakhstan?
> 
> hope you enjoy your fresh steaming plate of story!
> 
> Also, @ my dear friend EmTheLion, just watch me drop this on you, bitch

There’s no fucking alarm clock in Otabek’s guest room, so Yuri, a chronically light sleeper, has no idea what early hour of the morning it is when he’s awoken by the sound of the door creaking open. 

However, he has no slice of doubt cake of what  _ exactly  _ is happening.

Heavy, sludging footsteps slowly approach the bedside. There is faint moonlight that discerns the room from complete darkness, so he can see a slightly silver Otabek standing there, without a shirt and wearing his Meteora pajama pants, slouched over, and with his eyes closed. Because he just fucking sleepwalked into the guest room.

Yuri can’t even summon the strength to sigh, or to change his facial expressions, so he watches in wait. What, he thinks, are you going to rant about to me now?

Otabek unconsciously holds up a finger. “I’m terrified,” he slurs quietly. “I was very stupid. I thought life was like a binder, and I could keep things in mine separate.”

Yuri blinks. He blinks all the time, as all humans do, but this one is pointedly pointed, and very bewildered.

“I thought I could tell everyone… everything,” he mumbles. “I did! Everything. I told them the color. The color would be a deep gold! Almost bronze. A little scratchy. With words.” His hand moves floppily through the air to hit himself on the forehead. “I told them about the dream thing. And what I need. And now I’m terrified.” His expression turns crestfallen--if he, in his sleep, could open his eyes, they would probably be crying. “They’re gonna tell him everything. He’ll get mad. He’ll leave. I don’t want Yuri to leave.”

Yuri faintly remembers something about a secret from the night before, and he’s trying to gather his thoughts on it together. 

But then Otabek says softly, “I’m done,” and lays himself gently on top of the sheets, limbs tucked neatly together, curled on his side. He’s perfect even in his sleep.

Yuri gasps a little bit. He’s just had a small epiphany, and he’s too tired to think it, so he says it out loud instead: “You always sleepwalk to me!” he murmurs. “I always thought that it was because you’re so used to walking to my room in St. Petersburg that you memorized the route and copied it in your sleep. But this isn’t St. Petersburg. Why would you always walk to the guest room?” He lets the question hang in the air, ridiculously, and when no answer comes, he leans forward and pokes Otabek’s shoulder. “ _ I bet, _ ” he whispers conspiratorially, “that you just seek me out in your sleep, huh? You just wanna. I don’t know. Have a sleepover, or something.”

Otabek, being a highly advanced sleepwalker but a seriously amateur sleep-replier, doesn’t really respond with words. Instead, he opens his mouth and lets out a little low noise that sounds like a newborn cub.

“You can stay here, you lug,” says Yuri contentedly. Then, because he’s in love, and because he’s very tired, he pulls his gangly arms out from under the covers, and wraps them around his best friend.

Accordingly, Otabek snuggles close against him and fits the spot between his nose and his forehead against Yuri’s collarbone. They fit well together, as two matching pieces from an abstract sculpture about sex do. 

Then Yuri drifts back into a sleep even more peaceful than before. It’s a small moment, but he resolves that if Aliya should ask for more examples of Otabek sleepwalking into his room, this is the one he’ll never share.

:::::

Today is the day of vindication. The day of just desserts, and the day when the wrongs of the universe all right themselves, and the day that Yuri has been waiting for since Otabek started being dodgy about his friends about two and a half years ago.

Today is the day he’s going to meet those friends.

Yuri’s mind, for some reason, registers this in his sleep, and it sends such a concentrated bolt of adrenaline through his endocrine system that he’s fully awake and sitting up in bed within a span of five seconds. The sun in early sunrise is catching the dust in the air and turning it gold, and the breeze through the slightly cracked window is filling him with energy, and damn, Yuri isn’t even a morning person.

He looks down to Otabek, who, asleep, has the peaceful innocence of a child. Yuri kind of wants to kiss him on the forehead, but that’s not what they’ve become yet. 

With less than half of a moment of consideration, Yuri leaps on Otabek like a cat, knobby knees and all.

Otabek wheezes. His eyes bug reflexively, and then fix on Yuri, who’s sitting solidly on his chest and whose toes are digging into his thighs. “Yura,” he says, like that’s his default thought.

Yuri doesn’t, honestly, give a third of a snake’s ass how cute Otabek looks right now. Today is his day of  _ vindication _ , and excitement, and he’s perfectly justified to rub it in his face from now until forever.

“Beka!” he says, bouncing again on his chest to demonstrate his enthusiasm. “I’m meeting your friends today!”

Otabek’s tranquil early morning face vanishes like it was only ever a mirage. It’s filled with the familiar terror more quickly than Yuri had just woken up. His brows stiffen, and his eyes widen disproportionately, and his jaw slackens, and Yuri doesn’t need to be fluent in his unspoken dialect to translate this thoughts right now:  _ Fuck.  _

Yuri doesn’t even feel bad.

“Are you sure you want to?” Otabek says weakly.  _ I know what the answer will be _ , he adds wordlessly,  _ but you generally want what’s best for me so I’m hoping you’ll change your mind.  _

Yuri narrows his eyes:  _ Generally,  _ he replies silently,  _ does not mean always.  _ “Yeah, of course I do,” he says aloud. “They seem like really nice people, you know? It’s about time. Plus, it’s too late to back out now.”

Otabek whines in mild frustration and throws his head back onto the pillow; he tosses his arm to the side until he finds another pillow to grab, and then he presses it onto his face. His whine comes out a bit muffled after that.

“This pillow is yours,” Otabek says grumpily after a few seconds. 

“How do you know?”

“It smells like peppermint. Like your shampoo.”

“Fuck off, Sherlock.”

“Also,” continues Otabek, ignoring Yuri’s accusation and proceeding to deduce in an even more Sherlock-esque fashion. “This isn’t my room. This is the guest room. Why am I in your bed?”

“Sleepwalking,” Yuri answers dismissively. “Like you do almost every night we sleep in the same flat. Why are you even questioning it at this point?”

In response, Otabek shoves the pillow more firmly into his face.

Yuri takes up again his little hobby of bouncing on Otabek’s chest. “But anyway, if you could maybe hurry the fuck up with waking up, that would be great.” Otabek wheezes again, sounding considerably breathless, as Yuri’s knee digs into his belly. “After all, we don’t wanna be late for meeting the squad, right?”

“I’m awake,” says Otabek. “Please, please get off me. I’m about to die.”

Yuri may be petty, but he’s not cruel, so he obediently hops off of his best friend to the floor and, instead, bounces on the balls of his feet. “You’re not about to die. I know you can take a lot more pain than that.”

Otabek groans as he pushes himself up on the heels of his hands. “Yura, if you ever had sex, I am almost positive that you would be a sadist.”

Yuri could swear that he felt embarrassment radiating from something in Otabek’s expression, but it’s probably just the golden filter of the morning sun. “Who says that I have to have sex to be a sadist?” he grouches. “Have you met Lilia or Yakov or Victor? Have you done their drills?”

“I have, actually,” he says. “I met you at one of them.” And even though he doesn’t seem to have quite caught his breath yet, he looks up at Yuri with bright and happy dark dark eyes. 

Yuri rolls his eyes, just so Otabek won’t see them and hear their words: ‘I love you.’ “Seven thirty in the morning isn’t the time to get sappy, you loser,” he says. “Seven thirty in the morning is, in fact, the time to get your ass out of bed and get ready so we can go meet your friends.”

Otabek grumbles unintelligibly. “I can almost guarantee,” he says, “that at least one of them is going to be hungover.”

Yuri shrugs. “Who cares? Either I’m good enough for them, or I can show them how much better I am than them. Win-win scenario. Get your ass out of bed.” 

Otabek neither protests nor agrees, but he lets Yuri pull him up by both hands. His abs look nice in the angle of light. He slips on the floor in his socks, and just hardly recovers himself. Yuri is on the verge of giving him shit for wearing socks to bed in the dead of summer, but he does that practically every time they sleep in the same house in the summertime, and sometimes shit needs to be saved so the giving can be savored.

“I will say, though,” says Yuri. “I know I said you’re not dying, but I just might kill you if you don’t have any peach-and-orange tea.”

Otabek has peach-and-orange tea.

::::

(The second time they ever hung out at a competition was at a real tea shop--not a cafe, but a place just made for selling teas, called The Ounce. For purely scientific purposes, they had decided to have a sampling of as many teas as possible. A simple peach-and-orange tea was only the third sampling they were given--but after a single sip, Otabek vehemently refused to drink anything else. 

He had so many cups, in fact, that on their ride back to the hotel, he had to stop halfway in a park to piss. 

But it was still daytime, and Helsinki parks are, as a rule, crowded as hell. So Otabek near sprinted the entirety of the park trying to find a hidden place to pee, holding his crotch, his face pained, panicked, and bright red--finally, he very literally dove into a cluster of shrubs, while passersby looked on in bewilderment.

Yuri, who hadn’t had quite so much peach-and-orange tea, but still a lot, did actually piss himself from laughter. He pretended to fall into a nearby fountain (when he not so much fell but jumped in).

And so, on the eve of the 2017 World Championships, the day ended with a sopping wet Yuri and a disgruntled Otabek with leaves in his hair pulling up to the Original Sokos Hotel Helsinki, looking significantly less cool than people riding a black motorcycle rightly should.)

::::

On his bike, they weave through the traffic like hair through a brush. There’s music Yuri’s never heard before blaring from cars, and there’s people walking down the sidewalks, steadily but not all that quickly. It might just be another radio, but he thinks that some of them might be singing.

Yuri loves it--loves the drop in his stomach when they pull a sharp turn, and the fresh feeling of early dawn in a city he’s a stranger with. European cities tend to follow a trend--dignified buildings, stone streets, a moneyed atmosphere, and St. Petersburg is just another variation of the archetype. Almaty is a different beast from a different genre.

They’re headed for a park near the south side of Almaty, right where the mountains meet the metropolis. 

“Left staircase, second level is where we’re meeting them,” Otabek explained before-- “I don’t know which left they mean, but you can’t really miss them. It’s pretty obvious.” It’s a vague description, and Yuri doesn’t really know what to expect. 

But it’s in a glorious scene that Yuri first meets Otabek’s group of friends.

First President’s Park lies in a cradle of mountains, rough and green, jagged and wild. Swarths of trees with deep, full foliage flank the park like an army. Yuri’s been across the world in his short but victorious life, but he’s never encountered anywhere quite like this.

They park the bike. Yuri takes off his helmet and shakes his hair loose, but he can’t stop staring at the mountains.

Otabek nudges him. “You know, Yuri- there are a lot of things to explore in Almaty. Other parks. There’s at least two tea shops. Strip clubs. Let’s go check out one of those instead.”

“Strip clubs?” Yuri flattens his mouth skeptically.

“I’m trying to appeal to your baser teenage instincts.”

Yuri kicks him in the ankle. “Asshole. Do you have to be such a pussy?”

“Do you have to use such gendered insults?”

Yuri levels him with the same dry and frankly impassive gaze that he’s usually the one subject to when it comes to his crazier ideas; after only a few seconds, his best friend, the massive pushover, sighs and capitulates. “Follow me,” he says, as long-suffering as he’s ever been. And Yuri, of course, has no trouble doing so, since following Otabek is an action engraved into his  soul at this point.

He guides them underneath a half-ring of columns, through paths of ornate brown streetlamps, past luscious lawns filled with colorful sculptures. A few tired mothers watch their toddlers leap in the cool grass; a jogger meanders past them; a sharply dressed businesswoman sips coffee on a bench with lifeless eyes. Someone who he assumes is the first president is a bronze statue, sitting on a raised platform. And at the end of a straight long path framed with vibrant flowers, a little observatory rises up on a little hill.

The first thing Yuri ever sees of Otabek’s friends is them sitting in a group on the observatory stairs. They’re sharing what looks like fast food, and they’re laughing uproariously, but the gold light of dawn is shining on them and it makes them look like young gods.

Yuri, all of the sudden, feels very insecure.

They must know who he is, right? So they must know how young he is; they must know about the regrettable pieces he skated to--and damn, the exhibition piece when he was fifteen! How could they not think of him as weird? How could they see him as anything other than a loud skinny kid with poor taste?

Needing strength, he turns to Otabek.

And, of course, since Otabek was apparently handmade to be everything Yuri has ever needed, he finds exactly that in looking at him.

Otabek looks petrified. He looks like he’s gotten on the scariest roller coaster in the world--and Otabek does  _ not  _ like roller coasters--and it’s already too late to back out and get off.

And it gives Yuri the conviction: no matter how this goes, it’s still revenge for Otabek hiding his friends for three and a half years. Nature is nature is nature, and Yuri will be petty until his dying day, and out of the sheer force of spite, Yuri will go through with this.

“That’s them, right?” He pokes Otabek in his side, who snaps out of his reverie. “Let’s go.”

Otabek whines. ‘Do we have to?’ says the desperation in his eyes.

‘Yes,’ responds Yuri’s hand, shoving him forward. “It’s gonna be fine,” he says. “What’s the worst that can happen? They spill your secret? If they try, I’ll just stick my fingers in my ears and scream.”

Otabek doesn’t shout out a greeting, because he’s Otabek, and also because he can’t stop swallowing from nervousness; Yuri also doesn’t shout out a greeting, because he doesn’t know them, and that would be weird. So they walk towards the observatory in companionable silence, bumping their shoulders into each other with every other step.

As they grow closer, Yuri looks closer at the group on the stairs. There’s three girls, four boys, lounging together in complete comfort of company, and there is, in fact, a greasy bag of Hardee’s crumpled in the middle.

Two boys with identical fine, delicate features--twins, they must be--stand in their shared passion over whatever their conversation is, pointing emphatically at a girl with a skeptical expression. Yuri catches one’s words as he raises his voice: “...no, I  _ swear  _ to you that there’s a secret third sibling, Sohi. Last night we were at Esperanza, setting up, a girl I’ve never seen before comes up to me like she knows me or something--”

The other twin pitches in, “And I turned around and she almost started  _ crying,  _ saying now she didn’t know which one she lost her virginity to--”

“But I never saw her. Or banged her.”

“And I didn’t either!”

“Which means,” concludes the first in a scientific tone, “That there is a third sibling our parents never told us about, probably because he sleeps with random girls in Esperanza and never talks to again.”

The skeptical girl--Sohi, was it?--she schools her face into one impossibly more skeptical than before. “Or maybe,” she says, “we live in a city with almost two million people, and there’s someone who looks remotely like you.”

“Impossible!” the second dismisses. “No one in this damn city is half as beautiful as--” His twin smacks him, and he promptly shuts up. 

Yuri’s brain is whirring like an overheated laptop or a steampunk heart, trying to decipher the rapid-fire Kazakh he’s hearing now. As a result, it clocks in at just under half a minute for him to realize that the reason for the sudden silence is that every single member of this motley crew is now staring at him.

It’s a bit of a shock as he realizes: the jaws of two drop, and a sweet-looking girl and boy make almost simultaneous visages of childlike delight, and a girl of almost terrifying beauty smirks in satisfaction; the twin who was smacked murmurs quietly, “I was wrong;” a messy-looking young man in the back pulls a cigarette from his lips and says, “Wow.”

“I was wrong!” repeats the twin, looking as one would on finding a mildly valuable artifact in their backyard. He gestures to his brother-- “Ken, come help me with this.”

Ken and his brother approach Yuri--completely ignoring Otabek, which Otabek clearly notices by the scowl on his face--and stick out their hands in greeting. “Yuri, is it? It is an  _ honor  _ to meet you. Absolute honor. I’m Ken.”

“And I’m Kirill,” follows the other twin, shaking Yuri’s hand even more emphatically. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll just need to briefly use you to make a point to the general audience here.”

So Ken and Kirill stand on either side of Yuri, and Kirill clears his throat. “My beloved friends, gathered here today to get fat on Hardee’s and to meet D.J. Altin’s beloved Yuri--I’m sorry, slip of the tongue, beloved  _ friend  _ Yuri--” 

Kirill throws a wink at Otabek. Yuri, who is still more lost in this situation than Otabek trying to find the grocery store the first time he visited St. Petersburg, can only distantly note the terror in Otabek’s eyes, as if he’s in line for the guillotine.

Kirill continues: “I think the first thing we should do here in this situation is to really appreciate this guy standing before us.”

“But is he a guy?” Ken interjects, “Is he human?”

“A valid question, brother. Let’s consider this--” and he gestures to Yuri’s helmet-head hair-- “He has this long fucking Rapunzel hair--no, Rapunzel is too heteronormative and not descriptive enough. Pure spun gold, I tell you. Can humans have hair like that?”

“Good point, Kirill. But look at this,” says Ken, pointing to Yuri’s eyes. “Sea glass? The sky? The lakes in the mountains? The meadows out east? I’ve taken classes in poetry and I can’t make a pretentious enough comparison.”

“Yeah,” chimes in the smoking boy, “Only D.J. Altin can do that.”

“Ganibek chiming in with his genius!” says Kirill dramatically. “But let’s focus on the really unbelievable part of this all--his features! Sharp, beautiful--”

“Perfect androgyny,” says Ken. “The Almaty high fashion scene would kill for him.”

“The high cheekbones!”

“The lips!”’

“The piercing expression!”

“And caught in the golden light of the dawn! At least a demigod, I tell you!”

“I think it would be impossible for any random girl in Esperanza to mistake him for someone else,” says Kirill sagely.

The entire group is nodding along as if to a philosophical lecture. Yuri has spent countless hours with the grossest couple possibly to disgrace the world, but never in his life has he had to mentally restrain himself this hard from shouting  _ fuck off.  _

“In conclusion,” Ken says with a flourish. “D.J. Altin, Yuri is even more beautiful than you said he was.”

This snags Yuri’s attention, and he turns from this bewildering scene to Otabek--Otabek, whose face has achieved and far surpassed the level of  _ redness  _ that it had last night. If Midas had been cursed that all he touched turned to ruby, it wouldn’t be that far beyond belief that Midas had just come and violently backhanded Otabek across the cheek.

“I said that his  _ skating  _ was beautiful,” Otabek mumbles in a tone that would be protesting if it didn’t seem more to be asking for death. “There’s a big difference.”

“You’re right--there is a big difference,” says the terrifying beautiful girl. “We know. You’ve said both.”

The smoking boy whistles and forcefully high-fives her.

Yuri’s lovesick Senses, despite the early hour, have come and raised their hackles. He’s not stupid, and his Senses are well-honed, and what it sounds like to him right now is that Otabek has been telling his friends that Yuri is beautiful, and is now feeling the backlash. 

The romantic side of him, which is chained up in the back of his brain because it’s not all that characteristic, whispers passionately, ‘He likes you! Your love isn’t unrequited!’ But Yuri’s hopes have been met and married with disappointment before: for instance, when Viktor and Yuuri said they were going to tone down the PDA in the rink.

The core of his personality has a much more acceptable view on this: obviously Otabek told his friends that Yuri was beautiful; he would be a damn horrible best friend if he didn’t. Yuri  _ is  _ beautiful.

His brain is starting to whir like a laptop again, and it has nothing to do with all the Kazakh being spoken. So, he follows his deepest, most ingrained instinct:

“I think maybe you all should take a fuck, off, and shut it,” Yuri says grumpily. “Also, Beka. I can guarantee you I’m confused as hell, but how’s the shit tasting that they’re giving you?”

Otabek lets out a low breath. “It tastes,” he says, “Like shit.”

“Sniped!” exclaim Sohi, Ken, and Kirill together. 

“Maybe we should give poor D.J. Altin a break here,” says a voice sweetly. Her voice is fitting, since it is, in fact, the sweet-looking girl who had looked delighted on seeing him. “It’s not even the daytime yet. We’ll kill him if we don’t ease up on the teasing a little.”

“But Bota!” whines Ken. “Giving D.J. Altin shit is my passion in life.”

As the group nods in clear agreement to this, Yuri thinks that maybe this group of friends isn’t so bad after all. At a moment like this, it would serve to voice his approval, and so he does. “I can’t believe we all share the same life goal,” he says approvingly.

The smoking boy--Ganibek--whistles again in triumph. “Incredible! You’re part of the group already.”

“Like, damn, D.J. Altin, where’d you find this boy?” says Kirill.

Yuri snorts. “I can answer this for you.” And casting a mischievous glance down to Otabek, he says, “He found me at a training camp when I was ten, tearing his ass to shreds at ballet.”

And since it seems to be the general attitude of the group, all six friends erupt in an expert chorale of “Ooh”s and “Soldier eyes, bitch!” and “A spectacle of a roast!” Yuri feels his mood, which had gone to excited to petty to nervous to confused in a remarkably short time, getting lighter and brighter with the rising sun. Yes, he’s decided: these friends really aren’t bad at all.

Beside him, he hears a deeply red and regretful Otabek mutter in repeat: “This was a bad idea. This was such a bad idea. I’m going to be dead by the end of the day.” God, Yuri loves him so much. 

::::

It doesn’t take long to learn who’s who, and how, and what the deal is, and all that; each of the friends are easily recognizable in their own iconic way.

There is Ken and Kirill, of course, the twins. It seems that they’ve always been in Otabek’s life, in one form or another, even if they hadn’t always been friends. They were in Otabek’s class all through primary school. They were all a part of the same service program in their early teens. Then, after Otabek returned from his years of training abroad, he found that they worked at the nightclub he frequently performed at. And it was then that they agreed that since they kept appearing in each other’s lives for the last ten years, and they’d likely still keep appearing in the future, they might as well become friends.

Thus, Ken, Kirill, and Otabek were the first three.

Then along came Bota Abdina, sweeter and more bubbly than the champagne at any given GPF banquet. She’s a professional, competitive ballroom dancer--and one day, her roommate dared her to act like a street performer and dance in public. 

So, accompanied by her roommate’s boyfriend to film the whole ordeal, an equally sweet and very bookish boy named Bekzat, Bota stood out on the streets and grabbed the first boy she saw to dance a tango with her.

That boy was Otabek. 

It was, ultimately, a disaster, since Otabek is good at a good many things, but highly advanced tango is not one of them. But it made Bekzat cry from laughter as he filmed it all, and it made Ken and Kirill cry from laughter as they watched, and it made Bota cry from laughter since Otabek was so damn bad at this, and it made Otabek cry from laughter to deflect the shame of being so damn bad at this. So in the end (for solidarity, of course) Otabek, Bota, Kirill, Ken, and Bekzat were all sitting on a sidewalk in the middle of downtown Almaty, crying, half-hyperventilating from laughter, and firmly not giving a shit about the judgemental stares of the passerby.

Bota’s roommate turned out to be cheating scum, but Bekzat was a sweet friend, and he stuck around. So it became Otabek, Bota, Ken, Kirill and Bekzat.

The next two came a bit by association: Sohi and Dilnaz.

Otabek, Yuri knows, has ridden bikes since he was young. What this precisely means is that when Otabek was fifteen and visited Italy, a girl had a crush on him and essentially forced him to learn how to ride a Vespa so she could fulfill her fantasy of riding on the back of a bike with a hot boy. It’s very goddamn weird out of context, but as he knows Otabek, Yuri  _ understands.  _

Anyhow, while nothing ever happened with the Vespa girl, an unexpected side effect of the incident is the deep love that Otabek developed for riding bikes. As soon as he was able, Otabek got his motorcycle license, and in every city which he visited for more than a day, he rented a bike just for the thrill of it.

This all led up to him really desperately wanting to buy a bike for himself. But he was still in the process of buying his apartment, and ice skating isn’t actually that lucrative a career unless you’re either Yuri or Viktor, and every bike he found was unreasonably expensive. 

So, he started hanging around a motorcycle garage in hopes that they would like him enough to give him a sizable discount. 

Of course, they liked him--unless you live in the unfortunate mindset that everyone ought to be outgoing and loud around strangers, it’s near impossible to dislike him--and so he suddenly found himself being roped into a secret, small, and very unofficial biker gang.

Yuri remembers this from Otabek talking him to deafness over Skype in the hours of morning so early they might as well not exist. He knows all about the biking saga, and how Otabek went from cool to extra cool.

What Yuri never knew is that it was in this secret, small, and very unofficial biker gang that he met Sohi and Dilnaz.

Sohi, among all of them, has the distinction of being very ordinary. She is very smart, but not enough to define herself by that, and very pretty, though also not enough to define herself by that, and her work ethic is just lax enough to  _ not  _ set her apart. She first came to the garage because she’s an engineering major, and she felt that she would better understand everything if she could work with her hands. She fell in with Otabek’s group with the graced ease of someone who isn’t quite popular, but is also very easy to talk to.

Dilnaz, like Almaty, is an entirely different beast from an entirely different genre.

Best as anyone can tell, she joined the biker gang later than everyone else, and immediately became unspoken leader. Dilnaz is fearless. Brilliant, in all levels except academic. Leadership flows from her like the rivers out of the mountains, like a queen, and she probably was a queen in some past life. 

“If it ever seems like she’s not one step ahead of you,” says Bekzat through a mouthful of burger, “then she’s manipulating you.”

And manipulation is Dilnaz’s simple scheme. She is a deep and intense sort of beauty, and she is rarely seen without dark eyes and dark lips and a leather jacket. Sensuality is written in her bones. Sexuality is written in the way she moves them. She talks low and seductive without trying; she has sex frequently, with men and women alike. 

Bekzat, on the topic, adds, “She’s what you’d think D.J. Altin is like if you didn’t know him. But I mean, you  _ definitely  _ know him. D.J. Altin is a huge nerd. Dilnaz is the real deal.”

And with the same authority that she joined the biker gang, she joined the friend group. But unlike the biker gang, she made no moves to become the leader or anything. After all, like love, friendship can be friendship but it can’t be true unless it’s equal.

Thus, Otabek, Ken, Kirill, Bota, Bekzat, Sohi, and Dilnaz were the first seven friends. 

And lastly, but not leastly, was Ganibek.

If you know Ganibek, you would not expect him to be a massive figure skating fanboy. He’s been high for so long, he doesn’t even need a hit to act high anymore; he’s relaxed about everything, including things he really shouldn’t be relaxed about (like dodging arrest), and he has an effortlessly caustically witty sense of humor. He’s the neighborhood drug dealer of the shitty neighborhood he lives in; he exists primarily within the hidden dimension that most shady and outright criminal things do.

He also loves figure skating, and was such a fervid fan of the Hero of Kazakhstan that he just wanted desperately to meet him.

So one day, Ganibek just showed up to coffee with the friend group, and acted like nothing was out of the ordinary (even though he’d met none of them before). But even though he probably is supposed to be in jail, he really has a kind disposition overall, so no one ever kicked him out.

And these were the full eight friends: Otabek, Ken, Kirill, Bota, Bekzat, Sohi, Dilnaz, and Ganibek.

::::

“Huh,” says Yuri. “You all seem weird as hell.” Blunt, but true.

“What about Bota?” says Bekzat. “She’s awesome. She’s not weird.”

Absorbed in her phone, Dilnaz says, “Bota did a death drop in the middle of a competition. It was a very formal western competition. The waltz?”

“Okay,” Bekzat concedes, with a halfway thoughtful and halfway guilty look on his face. “Maybe Bota is a little weird.”

“Speaking of dance,” says Bota, who seems eager to be out of the eye of the storm-conversation. “Yuri, D.J. Altin told us you’re great at ballet.”

Yuri is still having a hard time reconciling the nickname D.J. Altin with Otabek, who currently is down to a manageable level of pink, but still looks unmanageably terrified. “I’m awesome at ballet,” he says. “I could probably be a professional danseur if I wanted to quit skating.”

And instead of leading to normal questions like ‘oh, what  _ would  _ you do if you quit skating?’ (become a veterinarian) and ‘how did you get that good?’ (Lilia Baranovskaya murders me daily), Ken says mischievously, “You must be really flexible.”

“I can put both my feet behind my head,” Yuri says proudly.

“Both feet!” Ken exclaims. He pokes Otabek roughly. “D.J. Altin, are you hearing this? You gotta take advantage of the circumstances, you know. You don’t really need that much flexibility for your role, if you know what I mean.”

Yuri has to summon the most steely, superhuman reserve  _ not  _ to completely stop in his tracks out of shock. He doesn’t even bother trying to resist the judgemental look he feeds Ken.

Because, for the third time, he’s not stupid. And Ken just very plainly insinuated that Yuri and Otabek should have sex. With a very specific arrangement. While his love for Otabek is more based on the agape side of the equation, the comment suddenly has him thinking: you know, getting dicked down by Otabek would actually be pretty great.

Otabek sighs shakily. He looks like the Midas of ruby has just fucking socked him. “Yura,” he says. “I’m about to steal your line.”

“Go ahead.”

“Sometimes,” says Otabek, “I really want to kill you.”

“Honestly, I think it’s your line at this point,” says Yuri.

“Aww,” says Sohi. “They even influence each other’s speech. How sweet is that?”

“Sweeter than Bekzat,” answers Bota fondly.

Yuri doesn’t register the words at all, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t care anyway. He’s still caught within an inescapable mental loop where Ken suggested that he and Otabek have sex. Sex! With Otabek! At this point, most of his mental power is going towards not envisioning it in public.

Otabek gets a phone call; he’s got a shift tonight at Da Freak. He looks at Yuri, and his eyes say, regretfully, ‘I’m sorry I can’t spend more time with you.’

He’s fluent enough with Yuri’s mannerisms that he understands Yuri’s smirk to mean, ‘It’s okay. I’ll just sneak into the club to watch you there.’

Otabek frowns. A flick of his eyes over Yuri’s shoulder says, ‘But my friends will be there, and I’m still not sure they won’t spill my secrets.’

He smiles. ‘You’re more important than any fucking secret. I’ll beat them fucking down if they even try.’

“Also, the legal drinking age in Kazakhstan is twenty-one,” Otabek says aloud. “How would you even get in?”

“I managed to sneak into a nightclub in Barcelona when I was fifteen. The bouncers don’t have shit on me.”

::::

The sun waltzes slowly with time until it’s in the middle of the sky, the color of tropical seas, the air simmering with heat. It’s noon now, and Otabek and the friends are taking Yuri to Barakholka.

Once in the bazaar, the friends turn off down some little alleyway between the vendors’ booths and vanish, so it’s just Otabek and Yuri, now. 

In the Barakholka bazaar, Yuri is struck with an overall sense of wonder. He’s never really encountered humanity like this. Crowds of people, canvas stalls, rapid and highly skilled Kazakh haggling, shouts that ring like bells. People walking down dusty trodden lanes--some are quick; they know what they want--some meander and take too long staring at everything, even the walls; they’re chasing a feeling of awe.

Yuri is used to being in the spotlight and having a big name. No one pays him a second glance here; he’s just another part of the crowd. 

He’s also used to working hard as hell for his profession. Here, he looks at a vendor who’s selling finely embroidered dolls. That vendor probably worked for so long just to make them! Yuri’s hard work gets him international fame and the vendor’s hard work gets her on a little booth in the middle of a bazaar, but, Yuri realizes, they are fundamentally the same.

And it’s all really great, but the wonder reaches highest when he looks at Otabek. Away from his friends, who like to spend their time implying that he have sex with Yuri, the terror and stress melt away. 

His face has that subtle joy, an interior sparkle inside his eyes that Yuri swears is Heaven drawing back its curtains to let out a little light, the crinkles on the edge that hold the sun, the way he holds his mouth like he’s trying to keep the happiness from bubbling up his throat. Was Yuri handmade to love him?

“I’m about to die from hunger,” says Yuri melodramatically. “Let’s get lunch.”

“He kneels on my throat and calls me weak, but he can’t take a late lunch,” Otabek mutters. 

They go and get lunch.

Otabek and Yuri wander among the food section. Some stalls cook hot meals fresh, and with the rich scent in the air, Yuri thinks every meal looks more appealing than the last.

Suddenly, though, Otabek visibly lights up with an idea. “Apples were discovered in Almaty,” he says effusively. “How can I let you leave this market without trying an Almaty apple?”

Otabek grabs his hand to tug him forward, but even when they’re side by side, Yuri doesn’t bother letting go. They stop at a stand with stacks and stacks of pale red apples, stacked neatly. They buy two each to eat for lunch; then, they sit in a mostly empty corner of the bazaar against a cement wall.

The apples are sweet and crisp and cool. Juice runs down Otabek’s chin, and Yuri wants him to stay like that, sticky and messy and happy.

Otabek smiles. In the quiet of the corner, where the noise of the passerby is just removed, he says, “Yura, if I could spend my whole life eating apples with you in a bazaar, I would be the happiest man who ever lived.”

“What about in a tree?” Yuri teases. “Or on your bike? Or skating? Or in a club, or the mountains, or out with your friends?”

Otabek nods pensively. “I don’t think it’s the setting that’s important, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, the saga of Erin and the Russian website continues...
> 
> So I decided the best way to gain revenge against my friend would be to start actually learning Russian on Duolingo. And I swear on my mother's favorite pair of loafers it started as a joke, but like. I actually like learning the language now???????? And I'm understanding it????????????????????? I'm literally becoming trilingual as you read this, friends.
> 
> So yeah, thanks BFF, you pranked me, but the joke's on you... now you're stimulating my love for language you fool...
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!!! every single one of your wonderful comments sustains me and I would reply to all of them if I didn't typically check in on the story in the private browsing mode of my safari and I wasn't too lazy to log in every single time, Please comment!!! 
> 
> So like no promises but considering I only have 5k more to write this time, I think there will be somewhat LESS of a post gap
> 
> LOVE Y'ALL


	4. The Mischievous Friends' Big Fat Mouths, and the Story of How Dima Chernov Is Kind Of a Hoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yuri learns something new about what Otabek says in Almaty when he's not around, the friends go to a club, and America isn't the only country with a drinking age of 21, who knew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends!!! I really don't have an excuse for not posting for so long, to be honest. Closest thing is probably that now that summer's begun, I'm now officially infected with Don't Give A Shit syndrome :((((
> 
> This chapter is sort of the second scene I came up with when I came up with this story. The first one? Either the next one or the chapter after that, depending on long the motorcycle scene is ;) Whatever ya know I guess what I'm trying to say is that I woke up at midnight with a writing bug in my head and literally wrote like 2k words and finished the chapter and here ya go!!
> 
> Disclaimer?? I created Dilnaz for the express purpose that I want a Dilnaz in my life, Pleas.e
> 
> Hope you enjoy this trashpile!!

It’s three in the afternoon, and today has turned into one of those days where the heat climbs far above where it’s supposed to be.

So, Yuri and Otabek and his mischievous friends are all crammed inside Otabek’s apartment with noisy fans in the windows, sucking on ice cubes and sipping on cold, cheap, self-made margarita mix.

Yuri has a theory that when they’re all together, the friend group can’t resist draping themselves over each other on the couch like some sort of classical Dionysian painting. Because that’s how it is right now: Bota and Bekzat cuddling, Dilnaz laying on her side like a queen, Ken and Kirill looking somehow dignified as they try to stick their feet in Sohi’s face.

But even with the fan and the ice cubes and the margaritas, everyone on that couch is at least half-asleep from the oppressive heat.

Yuri, in the meanwhile, is sitting on a pillow on the ground, between Otabek’s knees, as Otabek lazily braids and then re-braids his hair. Otabek’s hands are deft and quick, and his face is probably very stoically professional right now. He likes to pretend that he’s a celebrity hair stylist, and Yuri likes to tell him that he’s no such thing.

“You’re basically a celebrity,” Otabek always says, and then assumes he’s made his point, and continues with his braiding.

(The problem, really, is that Otabek can’t really do anything more than a basic braid, maybe a French braid if he’s really focused.)

(But Yuri couldn’t give, honestly, less of a shit, because it feels amazing.)

Ganibek sits next to Yuri on the floor, holding an unlit cigarette.

“Don’t smoke in my apartment,” says Otabek.

Ganibek slips the smoke back into his pocket. “I should just spend all my time here. You’ll cure me of my addiction.”

Otabek pauses, seems to consider, and says, “Maybe. But don’t bring your criminal baggage in my apartment.”

Ganibek probably has never been on a plane in his life, because his criminal baggage is too heavy for luggage policy. He turns to Yuri. “Yuri Gold Boy, want to hear some embarrassing stories about D.J. Altin?”

“No, he already knows everything,” says Otabek, at the same time Yuri says, “I know everything embarrassing about Beka.”

“Wrong. What if he’s too embarrassed to tell you stuff?”

“Wrong,” Yuri parrots. “I don’t back down, Ganibek. One way or another, I always find out.” Usually at 3AM, be it on sleepwalk duty or Facetime. Or when they’re out to eat. Or at competitions.

Otabek isn’t really a big fan of keeping secrets.

“That’s creepy,” says Otabek.

“You’re creepy,” he ripostes--in English, he spits out, “Fucking leather ass, bad influence mother ass, kidnap ass fucker. Head like Leroy’s ass. Scarf got you looking like a fucking uhhh.”

Otabek quietly furrows his brows. “You know I’m bad at keeping up with English.”

He does know. That’s why he almost exclusively flames Otabek in English--he can’t even fight back. “Yeah,” he says, with a wide, too-innocent grin.

Satisfied, Yuri turns his attention to Ganibek, who has watched the whole exchange with a mischievous ratlike glint in his beady eyes. “Hit me with your shit. Don’t make it too bad, though. We don’t want to kill Beka before his time.”

Ganibek makes a show of stroking his chin, trying to think of something. “Do you know the um thing, friend?”

“Wow!” Yuri says with feigned shock. “You couldn’t possibly be talking about when Otabek Altin gets caught doing something he can’t explain, so he says um for a long time, and then fucking books it?”

“We’ve found him having a staring contest with a cat in the shop of a window--the cat looked away first, and he just said, ‘If you can’t handle _me_ , you aren’t strong enough to handle him.’ So we asked him what he was doing, and he went bright red, said ummm, and ran off to the rink!”

“One time last summer Viktor and Yuuri took us to a pet shop for their dog--” and at the words Viktor and Yuuri, Ganibek’s eyes widen slightly in awe-- “and we lost Beka, yeah? I kept on calling his name for ten minutes. I thought I’d gone and lost the Hero of Kazakhstan, but yup, five minutes later, we find him in the corner of the shop, playing with the salamanders! I didn’t even have to ask him. He took one look at me and then ran all the way back to my apartment. Which,” he added, tilting his eyes up to address Otabek, “is a completely pointless evasion tactic. Like, I went back to that apartment.”

Otabek’s face has gone red again--he looks like he’d really prefer to say “um” and run away to somewhere where none could ever find him.

Yuri reaches back to maybe pat his cheek, or something, but his arm isn’t all that long, so he just ends up poking Otabek’s chin. Otabek dramatically mimes biting his finger.

“There’s a glove on that finger, you know,” Yuri hums. It’s a familiar dialogue.

“I’m doing you a service, the finger is payment.”

“It’s a service to you, please. Being in my clique is a blessing.”

Otabek rubs his face in his hand to hide his laughter. “You fucking--”

Ganibek, in the periphery of Yuri’s vision, clears his throat. “And once--I wasn’t there--but Bota and Sohi were walking downtown, and they saw D.J. Altin inside a jewelry store and he turned red as beetroot! I mean, he told us the reason for that later, but it was still funny at the time.”

Yuri leans forward conspiratorially. “Wanna tell me the reason?”

Otabek lightly tugs his hair, and Yuri understands: this is related to the Secret.

“All I’ll tell you,” says Ganibek, “Is that it would be bronze.”

“Deep gold,” says Otabek quietly.

“Almost bronze,” Ganibek amends.

“But my medals are pure fucking gold,” says Yuri, to change the topic. “I’m liking the um shit, but I’ve already experienced that. Give me some good one-of-a-kind Beka. Stuff I’ve never heard. You’re a drug dealer, you should be good at this.”

“And I am,” says Ganibek. “I’ve got one. Did you know D.J. Altin is shit when it comes to pranks? This one ends with him covered in melted butter, naked, on an ice rink during a hockey practice.”

::::

He tugs Otabek by the elbow out of his chair. “If you’re gonna be mixing until two in the morning,” he says, “then you’re not leaving without a full dinner in your stomach.”

“What are you, my mother?”

“No. I’m your best friend, and you’re going to eat.” Yuri opens the refrigerator pensively. He knows how to cook exactly two things: pirozhki, and breaded anything. He’s not feeling any effort today, so he picks up some chicken and some bread crumbs and a carton of eggs, and he’ll go with the second option today.

Otabek shuffles up to stand behind him; he feels the heat at his side. “Are you gonna help me or what?”

“Of course,” says Otabek.

So side by side they make their food, and Otabek, being the little shit that he is, throws flour in Yuri’s face. There isn’t even flour in the recipe. He splutters.

“You’re lucky you’re gonna be leaving soon, or else I’d crack an egg on your head!”

“But I’m leaving soon.” He feels (rather than sees) Otabek smirk beside him. “You know, I didn’t think you could get any whiter, but this flour proved me wrong.”

“I’m Russian, Beka, let me live.”

“I’m trying. But you’re so white it looks like you’re dead.”

“ _Try me.”_

“I’m worried about you, Yura. I didn’t know you had a coke addiction. It’s sad that you waited to tell me until you were in my apartment.”

Without hesitation, Yuri cracks an egg on Otabek’s skull. Sick thick yellow runs down his face--the eggshells probably won’t come out of his hair for days.

“Tough luck,” Yuri says. “I guess you’ll have to shower.”

“I probably deserved that,” Otabek says.

Yuri shrugs. “Talk shit, get hit.” And the breaded chicken sizzles quietly and peacefully on the stovetop, and the sun is turning a richer yellow as the afternoon grows older.

Quietly, and peacefully, they eat their chicken side by side at the kitchen table. Otabek seems to have resigned to his own slimy egg-face. Yuri looks at him, and then out the window, and then back at him, as a connection is made in his mind.

“Don’t say it,” Otabek says.

Yuri says it. “The egg on your face looks just like the sun.”

“And your hair looks just like the egg,” Otabek says, clearing his plate. “I’m going to go shower.” He gets up, puts his plate in the sink, and slips out.

“Have fun,” he says, wishing he could be the shower, or at least share it.

Otabek comes back some thirty minutes later. His hair is slicked back, neat, not like the veritable (though _very_ soft) rats’ nest that Yuri knows and loves. He’s dressed slick in gray and black; he’s dangerously beautiful, since he was already beautiful with egg all over his face.

“I’ve got to go,” he announces largely to the room. Most of them seem to be absorbed in a rerun of What? Where? When?--god, from _2012,_ how uncultured are they--though Dilnaz seems more focused on unsuccessfully trying to get Sohi to kiss her.

The friends say a half-minded goodbye. “See you at Da Freak,” Yuri says with a grin.

Otabek lightly twitches his brow in warning. “You’re underage, you’re not going.”

“Fine, fine, chill,” says Yuri. “Just play like you’re trying to impress me. If you see me dancing in the club, it’s not me, it’s my alter ego Dima Chernov.”

“Don’t be a whore, Dilnaz,” Sohi mutters, pushing her friend’s face away with a light slap.

Otabek stares at Yuri for a bit, and then, like he’s shamelessly giving into a temptation, reaches out and touches Yuri’s head. “Dima Chernov can’t have hair like yours.”

“Dima Chernov says fuck off and do your shift. And what are the odds? I do too.”

So Otabek leaves, and Yuri is briefly entertained by visions of himself, one day, married, saying, “Fuck off and go to work, love,” and then realizing there’s a kid right behind him, and this has to happen every goddamn morning…

“Yuri Gold Boy!” calls Ganibek. “Come over and sit with us!”

Yuri snaps his gaze away from the closed apartment door. “Yeah, okay,” he says, wandering over to them. He settles on the floor between Sohi’s legs.

Dilnaz, like a snake, smoothly leans down from where she lies on Sohi’s lap; she wraps an elegant arm around Yuri’s shoulders, and her words are caramel murmurs in his ears: “We have to tell you a secret, Yuri Gold Boy.”

It’s been ten fucking seconds.

Immediately, Yuri feels a wash of deep guilt. This must be the Secret that Otabek has terrified of him finding out ever since he arrived--no, even before that. He promised Otabek that he wouldn’t take it; he wants to keep that promise; Otabek’s trust is the rarest diamond.

But he feels guilty, because he knows that no matter how hard he tries, he’s going to be hearing that secret tonight.

“I don’t want to hurt Beka, so maybe not,” he says flippantly.

“Oh, it’s not _that_ secret,” she says. “That one’s not our business. This one… well, it’s kind of our business. It won’t hurt him for you to know.”

Yuri isn’t all that religious, but he knows the story of Adam and Eve as well as the next kid from Orthodox Christian Russia. He never thought that his feminine aspects would lead to him literally being a millennial Eve, but here he is. “Get your apple bullshit away from me, Satan.”

“It’s the city of apples, you can’t escape it,” says Dilnaz, and he hears Ken curse quietly in the background: “Dammit, I was going to make that joke.”

Yuri sighs. “I can’t get away from this, can I?”

“Nope,” says Kirill.

So, Dilnaz leans in closer, and she smiles a dangerous switchblade smile. “When he’s home in Almaty,” she says, and her voice reaches a dangerous low, “we can’t get D.J. Altin to shut up about you.”

Yuri stares into Dilnaz’s tough-like-the-mountains dark eyes, and the air in his lungs can’t quite escape his throat. He feels like he’s just been given very very important knowledge, but he can’t fit it in his brain well enough to understand it.

“But seriously, never,” says Ken, effectively ruining the drama of the moment. “It’s the worst. From arrival to departure.”

“When he comes back from a competition or from St. Petersburg, your name is the first word on his lips by default,” Bota adds-- “I’ve heard enough about your adventures at the rink that yeah, you’ve never really been a stranger to us.”

“And you don’t even know how constant it’s been,” Kirill complains. “Me and Ken finally become close friends with him, and of course it’s only a few months before he goes, ‘Guys, I finally got Yuri Plisetsky to become friends with me.’”

“He doesn’t sound like that,” Yuri says skeptically.

“I’m paraphrasing, Yuri, get off my dick.” Kirill rolls his eyes. “We should have sworn a solemn oath in that very moment. ‘No talking about Yuri Plisetsky from here on out.’ It could have saved us hours of our lives.”

“We have spent as much time listening to D.J. Altin talk about you as the average man spends on a toilet, Yuri,” Ken says dramatically. “We all were the unwilling ear as it went from ‘we’re friends’ to ‘oh, we’re best friends’ to ‘I think I--’”

Bota smacks him. “Wrong secret, idiot.”

“Oh, right, sorry.”

Yuri’s head is spinning. He’s not convinced, at the moment, that Lilia’s training hasn’t actually turned him into a robot, because his mind feels like a computer with shitty wifi reception. The network just isn’t making a connection.

“I’m gonna go outside and stand on the balcony,” he says. “And like. Think.”

He removes himself from Sohi’s legs and Dilnaz’s grip, and he walks outside onto the tiny balcony, shutting the door behind him. Considering the sofa is about three feet away from the actual door, it kind of lowers the dramatic effect, but he really just needs some air right now.

The sun is going down over Almaty. This time, he’s faced away from the sunset, but he can still see the edge of the sky where cotton candy clouds fade into starry night. The breeze is just on this side of uncomfortably chilly. The people below are walking with that peculiar half-urgency when you’re going home.

So, yes, in Almaty it is dusk, but the truth is dawning on Yuri.

“I like to talk about the things I love,” he murmurs to himself--that’s what Otabek said.

Otabek talks for ages about the things he loves.

Otabek never stops talking about him.

Otabek loves me, he thinks, and he feels like his life has just been rebooted. Otabek loves me, he thinks, and suddenly the world seems a lot fresher.

He knows that he doesn’t know the truth--maybe it’s not the same way Yuri feels?--but for once, it’s his romantic side squashing his logical side. He is flooded with the feeling of new hope. It feels like springtime. It feels like easter. It feels like the hour of dawn when the sun filters golden through the leaves and the dew hasn’t yet evaporated.

Otabek loves me, he thinks.

“Otabek loves me,” he says to no one in particular. He wants those words to turn into a package of fireworks, and for those fireworks to fly up into the sky and burst into a billion colors so everyone can know. He wants those words to live inside his body and become part of his blood.

Yuri, being Yuri, quickly drags at least part of his mind down from cloud nine.

He concedes to himself: okay, maybe it’s platonic love. Maybe Otabek isn’t on the dimension of “I’m pretty sure you’re my soulmate, but without a doubt the love of my life, and I don’t think there’s anyone else for me” that Yuri has (ascended to? Sunk to?) these past years.

But that’s okay! Otabek _loves_ him. What the fuck is romantic desire if the love is still deeply there anyway? So Yuri won’t pull himself down from cloud nine all the way, not this time: even though Otabek only loves him as a friend. This time, Yuri’s going to let himself be young and dumb and head-over-heels in love with someone who loves him too.

The balcony door opens, and Ganibek sidles out next to him. Yuri only notices his presence peripherally until he pulls the cigarette out of his pocket, and this time a lighter with it.

Yuri deftly hits the cigarette out of his hand.

“Hey!” Ganibek says (although he sounds more sad than annoyed), watching the cigarette fall down, down, down, and hit the ground. “That was my last smoke.”

“Oops,” Yuri replies without an ounce of regret. “No smoking in Otabek Altin’s apartment.”

Ganibek’s rat eyes stare at him mournfully. “And I thought you would be on my side,” he says.

“Sorry,” says Yuri, not actually sorry in the slightest. Yuri has his priorities sorted out.

“Well.” Ganibek looks back down at the sidewalk, and then seems to let go of his disappointment. “You look buzzed,” he notes.

Otabek loves me, he thinks. “I was thinking,” he says. “I thought of something really good.”

Ganibek, Yuri thinks, is not a beauty of a man. His big nose looks like it’s been broken at least three times, and he’s missing--is it _both_ of his canines? But he’s got an intractable aura of wisdom; like he knows what you’re thinking without you saying it; like Dumbledore. And Ganibek gives him a Dumbledore grin. He knows what Yuri thought.

“You gotta see, Yuri Gold Boy,” Ganibek says. “All of us, this whole friend group, I know it seems like we’re always sticking our noses in shit we shouldn’t be smelling. But you gotta see--we have an _interest_ in you and D.J. Altin.”

“What kind of _interest?_ ”

“Nothing fancy,” he says. “We just want you two to have a happy ending. We’ve heard it from D.J. Altin, we’ve heard it from Aliya, we’ve seen it just in the way that you two are around each other. You’ve got it all set up like a fairytale. We want to see this fairytale through to the happily-ever-after.”

The breeze is chilled, but his heart is warm. Yuri doesn’t look at Ganibek, but rather, at the sprawling skyline, at the mountains beyond. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Ganibek says, staring at the same view. “But hey. You ready to go clubbing tonight?”

“No shit. Are _you?_ ”

At this, Ganibek actually full-belly laughs. “Yuri Gold Boy, you have no idea. Me and Dilnaz and Ken and Kirill and kind of Sohi… we function in the day. We eat, we work, we keep on going on. But we really are alive in the night. You haven’t seen half of it yet.”

::::

Night has fallen over Yuri’s second full day in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and it’s the hour where he and Dilnaz, Sohi, Ken, Kirill, Bota, Bekzat, Ganibek are off to see Otabek playing a set at Da Freak.

Yuri smiles at his own reflection in the colorful, cheerful guest room. He feels older. He feels stunning. He feels dangerous.

He’s become a little avant-garde in fashion, and he’s avant-garde tonight: black joggers, a black something halfway between shorts and a skirt, a white loose wide shoulder tank, hair down and wild, eyes sharp with liner. It’s not a crop-top-leggings kind of sexy; it’s the kind of sexy that intimidates. He looks like as much of a city kid as he really is.

He swears, stepping out into the main room, that Dilnaz licks her lips when she looks at him. It was probably just his imagination, though.

They pile down into a taxi someone had called a while before. All eight of them, squashed in the back. Bota sits on his lap; she’s sweet, and he doesn’t mind.

Bota leans back and whispers to him: “Yuri, I think you’re Dilnaz’s prey for the night.”

He wasn’t imagining it, then.

It’s noisy in the taxi, so he feels confident that he’s unheard as he replies quietly, “Has she slept with everyone in this friend group?”

“Almost,” Bota says. “I don’t think she’s slept with Bekzat or Otabek. Definitely not Otabek.”

“Oh,” says Yuri. A little line of relief runs down his spine that this girl hasn’t slept with Beka--then, “Wait, what? _You?”_

Bota giggles innocently. “I’m multi-faceted,” she says.

Yuri stares at the back of her head, at her smooth braid. He thought she was the innocent one. He once thought Otabek was _bad,_ but damn! Otabek is a mother-in-law’s dream compared to the rest of these fools.

It’s a timeless ride, crowded and with constant conversation, until they reach Da Freak. “Don’t drink to death,” bids the taxi driver as they all fall out the door, one after the other.

“Yes sir!” shouts Kirill in reply, with a sharp mock salute.

Da Freak sits on the edge of a park. The shadows of the path leading to are sharpened by the overhanging trees; it seems somewhat removed from the thick urban buzz of the rest of the city. But that neon purple light, the distant hum of what must be blasting music--it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

Thankfully, though, the line goes by quickly, and soon it’s Yuri and his friends being checked by the bouncer.

Yuri abruptly remembers that he’s technically underage. Technically, he isn’t allowed inside the club. Technically--no, actually--he’s sneaking in.

Thankfully, he’s never been scared by breaking the rules.

“Hey Serik,” says Kirill saucily. “Great night, isn’t it?”

“Awesome,” says Serik, the bouncer, who has a good half a foot and hundred pounds on Yuri. He’s the antithesis of a skater, he thinks; he probably knows shit about skating. He probably won’t cast a second glance at the tall, hot man who looks secure in himself.

“We’re just in to dance, my friend,” says Kirill. “Let us in?”

“No, hold on,” says Serik, blocking them off with his thick and mighty arm. With the other, he points to Yuri. “I know you. You’re Yuri Plisetsky, the figure skater. You are not twenty one.”

Yuri thinks to himself that it would be a great idea to never assume anything about anyone ever again. But Serik the bodyguard’s face is cold, and unyielding, and it looks like Yuri’s not going to be getting into this club any time soon.

“Um,” Yuri says intelligently.

“Come on!” Kirill whines. “We just want to dance, not get him drunk.”

“Put on the handcuff!” Bekzat pipes in, and there’s a chorus of nods. “He’s a champion, he’s a great guy, he’s worth the handcuff.”

Yuri raises his eyebrow. “The handcuff _what_ now?”

But it’s too late to question: Serik sighs exasperatedly, and reaches into his coat pocket. Then, the bouncer is tugging him forward by the wrist, and over the same wrist he claps a little metal handcuff and tightens it and locks it.

“The fuck?” says Yuri, since there’s not much else to say to that.

“It means you can’t get drinks at the bar,” Bekzat explains. He laughs lightly. “Actually, D.J. Altin is the reason they came up with that.”

Of course--where doesn’t Otabek change the world a little bit? “I don’t know the reason and I’m already not surprised.”

“It’s because he’s so talented, of course!” Bekzat says, enthused. “It’s because the club wanted him to DJ for a night, but he was only twenty. So someone fished out a handcuff to make sure he wasn’t drinking.”

“Does Beka even know he’s the reason it started?”

“No idea. Your man is a talented fellow, but he can also be a little forgetful sometimes.”

“ _Oh,_ yeah,” says Yuri. “Also, he’s not my man.”

“Boo,” jeers Bota distantly.

“Relationship status,” Sohi informs him, “is a lying bitch. Whatever it says, and whatever he says, it doesn’t change that he’s still yours.” The whole group ‘ooh’s immaturely.

Under ordinary circumstances, Yuri would have to resist the urge to flame the whole damn party, but now the words sap the warmth from the night and put it in his heart. They have an _interest_ in he and Otabek having a happy ending. Otabek loves him.

“You fucking fools,” he says. “Let’s dance, yeah?”

Serik grunts, and grumpily pushes open the door. The deep bass music spills out like a broken aquarium.

Ken shoves him forward. “We’re waiting on you, Gold Boy.”

::::

Yuri sees him immediately; he’d be either blind or someone else not to.

He’s in the middle of the stage, the glowing wall panels framing him, the blue lights an urban halo. Every time the spotlight passes, you can catch a glimpse of the light perspiration on his face. He’s glorious. Handsome. Hard to believe he was covered in egg just two hours ago.

And the music’s not so bad, either.

Kirill claps a firm hand on his shoulder, and he tears his eyes away from Otabek and towards his friend. Kirill’s smile is fucking contagious. No wonder he picks up girls so easily.

“Are you ready to get fucked up?” yells Kirill over the deep heartbeat of the music.

“Bitch, do you want me to get my ass thrown out?” Yuri yells back, lifting his cuffed wrist so that the stainless steel catches the sharp light--he’s not looking for a repeat of when he was fifteen.

“No, no!” Kirill squeezes his shoulder affirmatively and winks deeply. “You won’t get caught, my friend. We have a system here!”

And while the responsible, law-abiding-citizen thing to do would be to fuck off and keep dancing, Yuri hasn’t had a single drop of drink since he booked his ticket to Almaty. A Russian teenager, keeping dry for a month straight? Practically illegal in itself.

So, he winks back and offers his cuffed hand to Kirill. “Lead me away, officer.”

Kirill blanches. “I’m not the fucking police,” he says loudly, grabbing the proffered hand, spinning Yuri around, and holding Yuri’s wrists together as if there were actually two cuffs there. “What the fuck? I’m like the opposite of the fucking police. I’m like Ganibek. Fucking Gani-- _hey!_ ” Yuri tries to pull his hands out of Kirill’s grasp, laughing too hard to physically control his limbs, but Kirill shoves him forward. “You’re coming to the police station with me, you underage son of a bitch!”

“I’m over the age of consent!” Yuri shouts over his shoulder.

“You have the right to remain silent, you son of a bitch!”

Kirill pulls him by the cuff over to the bar, quieter and dimmer on the fringes of the club, and sits them down on two empty stools.

Beside them, a girl who looks vaguely like Mila blatantly flirts with a dark and flawlessly beautiful woman; meanwhile, a man is blatantly hitting on Mila-ish, and not taking the hit that Mila-ish is blatantly not interested.

“Oh bartender!” Kirill calls.

A short man with a face grumpier than Otabek’s average press photo (and a suit so sharp Yuri thinks his pastime is being a sugar daddy) sidles up before them. He looks at Kirill, and his face becomes less impressed than before. “Great,” he says. “Another Abayek twin. Which one are you this time?”

“Kirill Abayek, fine sir!” says Kirill merrily.

The bartender noticeably relaxes. Yuri wonders what the hell Ken did to this poor man that elicited this reaction. “And what can I get for you gentlemen today?”

Kirill places Yuri’s cuffed wrist on the bar. “A whiskey on the rocks for me, sir, and for my poor underaged friend here, a-- Gold Boy, what do you want?”

“Uh. A coke?” Yuri says doubtfully.

“Yes, that pathetic virgin underage party drink!” says Kirill. “Those, please.”

The bartender pours the drinks, and slides them over the counter, and Kirill takes one in each hand. “Thank you, sir!” he says, and then walks to the little tables in the back of the room. Yuri follows him in curiosity.

At a black table against the wall, Kirill stares across at him. His eyes are alight and glittering with mischief, but maybe that’s just the bouncing lights. “I do like myself a good coke,” he says, sliding the whiskey across the table to Yuri. “Down that in three seconds and I’ll buy you four vodka shots.”

Yuri smirks. This is how his night is supposed to go. Three seconds? He’s slammed the empty glass on the table in two flat.

Four vodka shots, a fucking pina colada courtesy of Ken, another six shots in a race he wins against Bekzat, and the intoxicating sight of Otabek working the stage have Yuri drunk off the tits he doesn’t have. Time doesn’t really feel like it’s supposed to, and the lights seem a lot brighter now, but he’s feeling just satisfied with his life as a whole now, and that means, logically, that they should dance.

Cool kids like these friends don’t settle for dancing in the edges, so they’re in the middle of the throng.

And the beat is deep and dark and slow and rattles their lungs and sounds like a brain when it’s high on weed and a heart when it’s having sex--and every person on the floor is dancing like the sex is in more than just the music. Yuri included.

He throws himself in. His arms are graceful where everyone else’s are awkward, but his body is dancing dirty. His hips are grinding the air. His torso moves languidly. And, he realizes, he wants Otabek to see him.

He cuffs Sohi in the side. “Dima Chernov!” he yells.

Understanding, she choruses in: “Dima Chernov is here!”--and their friends join-- “Dima Chernov! Dima Chernov!” Until their voices rise just above the cacophony of music.

And that’s when Otabek’s gaze _finally_ searches the crowd, and _finally_ lands on Yuri.

It’s dim and loud and Otabek probably can’t see his smirk, but he can see Yuri dance with even more purpose, more promise. Yuri grinds his ass back against Dilnaz, folding down to the floor and up again, his hair flying in a cascade over his back, looking up to meet Otabek’s gaze again.

And okay, the lighting’s too shitty to see Otabek’s eyes, but he does see the man’s mouth work up and down like a landlocked fish. The ideal, he thinks, would be to be blowing him under the DJ booth right now, but this isn’t a fucking porno, and Yuri’s already cutting it close to getting kicked out with how drunk he is now.

Dilnaz’s finely manicured hands slide around Yuri’s chest and pull him back against her to grind harder.

And then, with the drink, and the lights, and the exhilaration of dancing and the sex in the air, everything starts to blur.

::::

He comes to, in a sense, in the back of a taxi.

The cab is filled with raucous, drunken laughter, and it takes a strong few moments for it to all come back. Right--they danced for a few more hours, and then they all left, and got in a taxi, and now they’re headed back to Sohi’s apartment.

He registers a weird scratching sensation on his abs. Looking down, he startles: it’s Dilnaz’s hand wrapped around him, drawing patterns under his shirt.

Ken laughs above the fray. “Sohee! We gonna need, uh, fucking, uh, two room delgation?”

Sohi nods emphatically. She doesn’t seem as drunk as the rest; she simply seems enthusiastic. “Dilnaz wants like. Four people tonight. Including me. It’s gonna be the shit.”

“Mm,” says Dilnaz, between him and Sohi. A small smile is on her face; her other hand is messing with Sohi’s bra strap. With a deft movement, she pushes the strap off her shoulder, and Sohi bats her hand away.

“Not until we get inside, Dilnaz!” she says lowly.

But as if on cue, the taxi pulls up in front of Sohi’s apartment building. Yuri doesn’t notice the lawn, or their stumbling up the two flights of stairs to her flat. The moon is bright, though; that he notices.

And he definitely notices when, the moment they’re all inside, Dilnaz pushes Sohi against the closed door and sticks her tongue in her mouth.

“The fuck?” he says to Ganibek, who seems to be the only one with any goddamn answers around here.

“Congratulations, Gold Boy, welcome to our clubbing tradition,” Ganibek says proudly. “We dance, we come to someone’s place, and you either pass out immediately or hook up in a side room.”

That’s some fucking tradition. He can’t hinder the reverent “shit” that escapes him.

“Shit,” Ganibek agrees.

“But like, uh, what group are you in?”

Ganibek winks. “What do you think?”

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. But Yuri’s drunk, so those rules don’t apply, and he’s about to tell Ganibek he looks like a fucking gargoyle, but then he feels fingers latch onto his shirt and tug him away.

Those fingers are Dilnaz’s, and they pull him until he bodily falls onto the pulled-out pullout couch, bouncing on the soft duvet. On one side of him, Sohi is now making out heavily with Ken. It’s less than fifty centimeters away from his face. He’s pretty sure he’s high right now.

But then he flips away from them, and there’s Dilnaz.

Maybe, he thinks, it took being drunk to really appreciate how fucking terrifyingly gorgeous Dilnaz is. There’s something in her near-black eyes, and the way her eyebrows are always just slightly quirked, like she’s always looking down on you, and her mysteriously unsmeared dark red lips--just something about her is hypnotizing. She looks at him like she wants to tear him to bits, and his eyes are hooked. He can’t bring himself to look away.

Dilnaz leans in close, puts her dark lips to his ear. God, he’s so drunk. He doesn’t even want her, but his body is pooling with adrenaline.

“If you want,” she whispers. “We can have sex right now.”

The air has left his lungs at this point. He doesn’t want her. But does he want the act itself? He can’t sort his brain; he doesn’t even know what he fucking wants.

Her hand is over his hip, sliding under the waistband, toying with his ass. “We could go into the bedroom or bathroom or some shit,” she says, “And I could bend you over and eat you out. But only if you want.”

Yes, damn, he wants that. He _wants_ sex. Even if it’s the alcohol’s voice, that’s no lie.

But he doesn’t want _her._ He doesn’t even love her. He’s in love with Otabek, that’s the thing. And he’d want Otabek if he was stone-cold sober. Fuck--he wants Otabek.

“No,” he blurts out, the final product of all his drunken doubts. “No, I want to save myself for Otabek.”

Shit--why’d he say that, again? There wasn’t a reason. That was a stupid drunk move. They weren’t supposed to know that he was a virgin, and that he was that serious about Otabek. That was a talk for another day. Not this thick and wild night.

“Lord, Dilnaz, preserve his chastity!” calls Kirill from somewhere on the floor.

Messy laughter follows him, and a lot of cooing too. “Preserve his chastity, bitch!”

Bota flings herself on top of him--is this how Otabek felt this morning when he was sitting on his lungs?--and hugs him close. “Awww,” she says into his ear. “Gold Boy Yuri, did you know that you’re so cuuuute? So lovey. So cute.”

Then she belches in his ear.

Yuri may have calmed down somewhat in the past years, but he’s on the verge of murderous intent for the gross comment and the belch combined.

In the end, neither murder nor sex really end up happening.

The lights are turned off, and everyone’s passed out, and Yuri’s fairly sure he’s the only one still awake. He watches the night-time city through the curtain of the nearest window. Hears the faint beeps of cars and the chatter of straggling partiers walking home from clubs; sees the unique orange-gold glow that lives in city lights; feels the music of the city, even through one little window.

He’s still too drunk to make any conclusive statement about the night, so he just stares.

::::

Yura: wow

Yura: dilnaz just offered to eat me out

Yura: but everyone started yelling PRESERVE HIS CHASTITY

Yura: who r they

Me: Where are you?!

Yura: sohis apartment chill

Me: Okay, good. Sometimes they go to really unsafe places when they’re drunk.

Yura: I love how ur not worried about dilnaz wanting to have sex w me

Me: They wouldn’t let her take advantage of you.

Yura: 4 am secret

Me: Hit me.

Yura: i wanted to say yes

Me: Oh.

Me: Is she still offering?

Yura: no she passed out like ten minutes ago i’m not waking any of them up they’ll puke on me

Yura: maybe its the shots or something

Yura: i really wanna feel good tonight

Yura: this morning

Yura: r u gonna come by or r u going home

Me: I don’t think you want to face them hungover.

Me: I’ll come pick you up on my way back.

Yura: nice when

Me: My gig just ended. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Can you unlock Sohi’s door?

Yura: ya just did it

Yura: sorry for being weird

Yura: im definitely drunk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey loves!!! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!! Please, show ur love if you have any. If you don't have any love? Well Idk what to tell you everyone has different tastes go on an adventure and eat some good food like I don't take it personally 
> 
> (But yall, comments and kudos make my heart fill with love, please, love yall)
> 
> Also! Life updates on me I guess  
> So like I'm leaving the country for the first time e v e r to go to Hungary and Austria like. Today. And I'm so excited! We're seeing a Mozart concert, in Vienna! I'm such trash now but I'm gonna walk out of that concert hall dignified, like Mads Mikkelsen in the role of Hannibal in the NBC show Hannibal. 
> 
> Also! (squared) I have started writing my next fic after this one is over.
> 
> So basically, my all time favorite movie is The Hunt For the Wilderpeople, in which a punk orphan kid runs away from the authorities and has an adventure with his foster father in New Zealand. It's so good, guys... you gotta see it...
> 
> But anyway, I was thinking- ok, what if u substitute that kid for Yuri Plisetsky, and substitute his foster father for his two foster parents Viktor and Yuuri, and substitute New Zealand for Russia, and instead of just trying to dodge the authorities, Yuri's running to Kazakhstan to fulfill a promise made with his forcibly estranged, fellow orphan best friend Otabek?
> 
> So like, I did that shit. A spoiler alert: there are spies, and a car chase through the steppes, and Yuri fucking lures a rabid bear off a cliff, and also accidentally becomes a drag queen. So Look Out Cuz That Has Plot, And Isn't Trash Like This Story!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Have a great week, guys! See ya around when I actually post more shit

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, this whole intro thing was supposed to be like three pages and not, in fact, 5,000 words or so. I guess that's how you know that NaNoWriMo has psychologically changed you.
> 
> The next chapter should be up fairly soon, since I gave up procrastination for Lent (no, literally) and I Know What I Want for the upcoming shit. But who tf knows?
> 
> Comments and shit would be cool I guess haha


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